Outlander
by Sullen Frog
Summary: When a brutal raid brings his whole world crashing down, one boy is left with nowhere else to go. Wanting to spare others from suffering as he has, he sets his sights on a lofty goal. Can he achieve this goal, despite the odds arrayed against him, or will he fail? And even if he succeeds, will his actions truly make a difference? Updates weekly. Now rated M for violence.
1. Through Unfamiliar Eyes

**Author's Note:** No, I'm not dead. Shocking, isn't it? My apologies for not updating my other stories; life's been...complicated, for lack of a better term, and I've had neither the time nor the inspiration to work on them. I can't promise that I'll ever get around to finishing Nocturne and Obscuritas, and in all honesty I probably won't; I was mostly writing those stories by the seat of my pants, which, in retrospect, is not something that I can do all that well. To the loyal readers of those stories, I'm sorry that you won't get to see them carried through to their conclusion.

Putting that aside, this story was born out of a simple question I asked myself one day; what would life be like on a feudal world whose culture was based (loosely, perhaps) on feudal Japan? How would its people view certain aspects of the Warhammer 40k setting that we take for granted? How would they refer to such things, and how would they react? How strange would their particular customs and mores appear to other denizens of the Imperium of Man? Could a single person from such a world have a lasting, positive impact on this galaxy?

In short, could an anime-style teen protagonist make a difference in the grim darkness of the far future?

I don't have a definitive answer to that question just yet, but in all likelihood...probably not. We'll just have to wait and see, won't we?

**Disclaimer of dubious legal necessity:** No, I don't own Warhammer 40,000. You think I have the cash to blow on all those damned figurines, or the space to put them anywhere? I'm just a fan with a bunch of Horus Heresy novels cluttering up his bookshelf.

* * *

**Through Unfamiliar Eyes**

Osamu Tetsuo ran for his life. Branches and brambles clawed at him as he ploughed through the underbrush, ripping the fabric of his sleeves and leaving bloody cuts scattered across his arms. His geta slapped noisily against the soles of his feet in time with the frantic sound of his own breathing, blades of grass nipping at his socks to scratch the feet beneath. Once or twice he nearly stumbled, but caught himself at the last second and continued on. He couldn't afford to stop, couldn't afford to slow down, not even for an instant.

If he did, he was dead for sure. Just like Taro…

The coarse, inhuman braying of his pursuers pushed all thoughts of his best friend's mangled body from his mind, urging Tetsuo to run even faster. He had to get back to the village. He had to warn everyone.

The Oni were coming.

Oni. He'd never believed in them before this day, thinking them nothing more than tales meant to frighten children and keep them from wandering off into the forests late at night. But now, having seen them—and seen what they'd done to poor Taro, and heard what they'd continued doing to him after Tetsuo turned and ran—there was no denying it; they were real, and far more horrifying than the storytellers could ever have imagined.

He clenched his eyes tightly shut, tears of guilt and grief running down his face. _Forgive me, Taro. I couldn't save you…_

His eyes snapped open as a horrible, ululating roar reached his ears. He threw a glance over his shoulder just in time to witness a bulbous, pink-skinned monstrosity burst out of the treeline and come charging towards him on two muscular legs, its gaping jaws hanging open to expose a maw full of row upon row of dagger-like teeth.

Tetsuo threw himself forward, feeling the heat of the beast's rancid breath on his back, and hurriedly scrambled to his feet. He'd seen one of these toothy nightmares before, standing alongside the Oni's chieftain like some kind of loyal hunting dog—and as it chased after him, its mouth snapping loudly between snorting breaths, he couldn't help feeling like the fox to its hound.

The path fell away a short distance ahead, and Tetsuo was startled to realize that he knew where he was. He was coming up on Spider's Cleft, a deep but narrow ravine said to be haunted by evil spirits that lured men to their doom with unnatural charms. He couldn't say whether the legend was true or not, and right then he didn't give a damn; all that mattered was that it was a very long drop, and that there was a long, sturdy branch hanging over it within jumping distance.

He tensed, preparing to spring, resisting the temptation to glance over his shoulder and see how close the beast was. He'd only get one shot at this—he had to make it count.

He gauged the distance in his head. Twenty metres to go.

Would it hold? He and Taro had crossed the ravine this way before, but that was when they were younger; he was almost a man now. Would it take his weight?

Fifteen metres.

No, no time to think about that now.

Ten metres.

He offered a silent prayer to the Celestial King. Please let this work…

Five.

The beast howled.

Now!

He leapt reaching out to grab hold of the branch. It groaned ominously under his weight, sagged…and held. His pursuer yowled in surprise and fury, and he looked down to see it go tumbling into that bottomless crack, its legs and stubby little arms flailing uselessly as it disappeared into the darkness.

Sighing in relief, Tetsuo swung himself forward and landed on the opposite side of the ravine with a grunt. "Thank you, my kami," he whispered to the heavens, holding a hand over his chest as he caught his breath.

Then he was off once more. He knew this ravine wouldn't stop the Oni for long, if it stopped them at all; part of him doubted those monsters were stupid enough to go charging into the cliff en masse, and he wouldn't be surprised if they could just leap across it given how strong they'd looked.

He had to hurry.

Sometime later the trees began to thin out, and he allowed his pace to slow as he reached the edge of the forest. It wouldn't be much longer now, he told himself as he stepped onto the rolling plains; in a matter of minutes the village would be in sight, and then he could spread the word. Every able-bodied man, woman and child would be needed if they were to survive against the Oni hordes…

His thoughts trailed off as he noticed a plume of black smoke rising from the horizon. A plume of smoke rising from beyond a familiar set of rolling hills…

His eyes widened in horror. Oh, no…

He broke into a run, moving as fast as his legs carry him and beyond, hoping against hope that he was wrong and that the black smoke meant something else—anything else—than what he feared.

On he ran, 'til his feet were raw and bloody and his blood was pounding in his ears like some frantic and infernal drumbeat, his breath coming and going in tune to the frantic beat of his heart. Please, kami, he implored. Let me be wrong. Let me be wrong…!

He crested the hill and skidded to a halt, shaking his head in disbelief. "No…"

The village of Takuoka, the quiet little village that had been the center of Osamu Tetsuo's entire world, lay before him in flames. Smoke and embers rose from the slanted roofs, painting the view that had once been so comforting and familiar in a hellish glow, and shadows danced among the flames—figures too far away and indistinct to make out between the distance and the rippling heat surrounding the village.

And over the crackling roar of the fire, over the sounds of tortured houses collapsing as their burned timbers gave way, he could hear the awful screams of the dying…and the hideous, bestial laughter of the Oni.

He could see them now—hulking, brutish figures chasing after fleeing smaller ones, knocking them down and hacking into their defenseless bodies with crude swords and axes…

Tetsuo clenched his hands into fists, trembling with impotent rage. There was nothing he could do to save his village—not by himself, not against these monsters. The only thing he'd accomplish if he went down there would be to get himself killed, and honourable though that might be it wouldn't do himself or anyone else any good.

The frantic neighing of a horse reached his ears. He looked towards the sound, and saw that Tozawa's stables on the outskirts of town had yet to burn down—and if that scream was any indication, the horses were still alive.

Eyes narrowed, Tetsuo hurried down the hill. He couldn't save the villagers he'd grown up alongside…but he could make sure their deaths weren't in vain.

He reached the stables in minutes and kicked open the door, bringing up an arm to shield himself to the heat. The fire was spreading rapidly; with all the hay and manure in here, the building would be consumed in the blink of an eye once the raging blaze reached it. wasting no time, he grabbed a saddle from the wall and made his way deeper into the corral, gazing into the pens in search of a mount.

Finally he found one all the way at the back—a trembling, wide-eyed mare that snorted and neighed angrily as he threw open the gate. Fortunately the horse was one he'd ridden before, and once she recognized him he managed to calm her down. In short order he had the mare saddled and ready to go, and without any preamble he guided her out of the pen, mounted her and sent her charging towards the exit.

An Oni appeared from out of nowhere to bar their path, its brutish green frame draped in furs, a spiked cudgel in one massive hand and a boxy, ramshackle pistol in the other. Legs set, beady little red eyes gleaming with malice, it opened its mouth and let out a roar of challenge, sending flecks of spittle spraying everywhere.

It was still roaring when the mare ploughed into the beast and trampled it to death beneath her hooves.

"Good girl," Tetsuo whispered. "Now let's go. Hiya!"

With those words he cracked the reins, sending her into a run. In no time at all they left Takuoka far behind them, using the main road for best possible speed. In a matter of hours they'd arrive at Murosaki prefecture, and then he could deliver his warning.

This time, he wouldn't be too late…

* * *

Daiman Yamato took a long drag from his lho-stick and sighed, blowing out a cloud of smoke. "That hit the spot," he said to no one in particular.

He leaned back against the trench wall, paying little heed to the cool, damp earth sending a chill into his back through the fabric of his uniform, and looked up into the sky. The heavens were clouded over, the light of the stars hidden beneath a thick grey veil that stretched unbroken from one end of the horizon to the other. The distant rumbling of thunder caught his ears, and he found the ghost of a smile forming on his lips. "Looks like it's gonna rain."

The other men squatting in the trench said nothing, too busy with their own tasks to answer. Some were working on their rifles, making sure that the guns were in good condition for the next wave. Others peered over the edge of the dugout, scanning the darkness for any signs of an impending attack.

Wryly shaking his head as he watched their antics, Yamato took another puff. They weren't fooling anyone; he could see the dead look in their eyes, see the weariness and resignation. They didn't expect to survive.

He couldn't blame them, all things considered; seven days of fighting Oni from the quote-unquote shelter of these filthy trenches would be enough to grind down anyone, really. Those green-skinned freaks were relentless. Every time you took one of them down, two more were there to take its place. And while their guns were crude, inaccurate things, the Oni filled the air with so many bullets during a charge that it didn't matter whether they aimed or not; inevitably they'd manage to hit something.

But the real horror was when they got close enough to take a swing at you, close enough that you could feel their noxious breath on your face and smell the rancid stench of their sweat. Even the smallest of them were built like brick shithouses, and they all carried a variety of primitive stone weapons. Yamato had seen one of the bigger Oni split a man in half right down the middle with a single blow of its massive hatchet early on, and he remembered how it had laughed while doing so.

He smiled grimly, remembering the sense of satisfaction he'd felt when he rammed his knife deep into the monster's throat and silenced it mid-laugh. It was there that they'd learned killing the biggest ones would send the littler ones into a panic—which was good, because otherwise they'd never have lasted this long and Murosaki would have fallen by now.

Yamato glanced towards the south, where he knew the city stood unmolested behind the trench lines, and sketched a mocking salute. "Hope you appreciate it, you sons of bitches."

An irritated grunt seemed to answer his question.

Blinking, Yamato looked down and saw that one of the others was sitting directly across from him, shooting him the mother of all death glares. "Can I help you?" Yamato asked, spreading his arms wide.

The other soldier said nothing.

Yamato shrugged. "Suit yourself." He took another drag from the lho-stick and let out a contented sigh. "Kami almighty, but this is some fine shit. Want some?"

Stony silence was the other soldier's only response.

"No? Your loss, pal." Lowering the fag, Yamato blew out a smoke ring.

Finally the other man spoke. "You shouldn't do that."

Yamato raised an eyebrow. "Come again?"

"I said you shouldn't do that," the other man said, his voice rising slightly.

Yamato shook his head and let out a chuckle. "Why, you gonna tell me that smoking is bad for my health? I know that already. Don't care."

"You should."

"Really?" Yamato jerked a thumb over his shoulder, towards the enemy lines. "Way I see it, the odds of me living long enough to get cancer from this are looking really, really low right about now."

The other man leaned forward, and Yamato could see that he was rather young—couldn't be older than his mid to late teens, at the very most. "It isn't right," he insisted.

Yamato rolled his eyes. "Where are you from, son? The boonies?"

"Takuoka," was the soft-spoken reply.

"That place the Oni burned down?" Yamato furrowed his eyebrows. "Hey…then you must be the guy who rode all the way out here to give the warning!" He grinned. "Thanks for the heads-up, pal."

The kid nodded mutely.

"What's your name, kid?"

It took a moment for the boy to respond. "Tetsuo."

"Yamato's the name." He held out a hand; when the kid didn't take it, he shrugged. "So Tetsuo," he began again, "are you enjoying life on the frontlines?"

Tetsuo glared. "Why would you even think to ask me that?"

"Why wouldn't I?" the older man asked. "Personally, I'm having the time of my life."

The boy stared at him like he'd just grown another head.

"Don't give me that look, Tetsuo," he said, his grin widening. "I've seen how you fight against the Oni—or was that somebody else I saw gutting them like fish yesterday with their bayonet?"

Tetsuo's silence was answer enough.

Yamato nodded smugly. "See? We're more alike than you thought. You and I, we're killers plain and simple."

A scowl came to Tetsuo's face. "You don't know me," he spat.

"Oh ho, struck a nerve have I?" Flicking the lho-stick away, Yamato leaned forward. "Alright, then, answer me this: why are you here? What is it you're fighting for? To get revenge? To soothe your guilt for letting your village die?"

"To protect people," the boy answered.

Yamato scoffed. "You mean to tell me you're willing to sit out here in the mud and die horribly for the sake of 'protecting' people you've never even met? Please."

"It's the truth!"

"Sure it is," Yamato sneered. "You think those people behind the city walls will care whether you live or die, Tetsuo? We're just two people in a sea of thousands, and dozens of us are dying every day; nobody's going to mourn us when we're gone."

Tetsuo's eyes hardened. "You think I care about that? You think it matters to me whether people will sing songs about my deeds? I'm not here for glory, and I'm not fighting just for revenge; I'm here because it's what I have to do."

The older man snorted. "Whatever you say, kiddo."

"They're coming back!" one of the other soldiers yelled. Scarcely had the words left his mouth when a great roar washed over the trench, the sound of hundreds of coarse voices baying in unison, a sound of bloodlust and battle frenzy and primitive, brutal instinct:

"WAAAAAAAGH!"

Yamato shrugged, grabbing his rifle as he rose to his feet. "Looks like break time's over," he said casually. "Try not to die, Tetsuo."

Tetsuo did not answer, having already taken his place in the firing line and brought up his rifle. The boy did his best to push the older man's words out of mind as he sighted down his gun's iron sights, watching as the Oni emerged from the dust in a vast tide of fur pelts, gnashing teeth and green flesh. He racked the charging handle, waiting for them to get closer, lining up a shot on one of the brutes at the head of the charge, a big one that stood head and shoulders above the rest of its brutish brethren. Taking a breath to steady his hand, Tetsuo took aim at the beast's forehead and pulled the trigger.

A beam of scarlet light lanced from the muzzle, striking the beast right between the eyes and blowing a fist-sized hole clean through its skull. Tetsuo smiled grimly as his target fell to the ground; then the smile faded, and he lined up another shot. All around him, the other men in the trench began to fire as well, filling the air with yet more rays of crimson death.

Tetsuo had never held a lasgun before a few days ago, and indeed had not even known that such a weapon existed until then. He was a quick study, though, and it had only taken him a few hours of practice to pick up the essentials; rest the stock in the crook of your arm, center in on the target and then pull the trigger.

"Center in on the target and pull the trigger," he whispered under his breath, the words like a mantra as he turned another Oni's head to fine pink mist. "Center in on the target and pull the trigger. Center in on the target and pull the trigger…"

He fired, and all around him his fellow soldiers were firing, and the Oni were dropping like flies, half a dozen or more felled every second or two by this fire team alone. It wasn't enough. The horde wasn't slowing down in the slightest, it just kept coming, heedless of the dead and dying greenskins that got trampled underfoot. For every Oni he killed, another pushed its way to the front of the mob, and they were getting closer, closer, closer.

Soon they would be at the first line of the trenches, and then the nightmare of close-quarters combat would begin…and given that Tetsuo and his fellows had nothing but their bayonets and knives for that, he wasn't feeling particularly optimistic about his chances of survival.

He frowned. Something wasn't right; usually when you took down the big ones the other Oni would at least falter a bit, and he knew that he'd killed at least two of them since the fight started. Yet they weren't slowing down at all, and barely seemed to notice the deaths of their leaders…

Then the green tide parted, and Tetsuo's eyes went wide as he caught sight of what was by far the biggest Oni he'd ever seen. Twice as big and twice as broad as its smaller brethren at the very least, the hulking brute was covered from head to toe in thick slabs of wood, bone and rock like some improvised suit of armour. A blood-spattered cloak made from the pelt of a ghost tiger billowed behind it as it pushed its way to the front of the mob, and it wore the skull of a dire boar like some horned helmet. A great metal pole rose from its back like the battle standard of a shogun, pieces of rusting metal affixed to it to form the image of a glowering Oni skull. In its left hand it held a truly massive gun with two barrels, and in its right it clutched a giant metal axe whose blade blurred and snarled like the mouth of some monstrous beast.

"WAAAGH!" roared the beast, and in response the entire horde roared right back.

A sinking feeling formed in the pit of Tetsuo's stomach, and for a moment he could do nothing but stare at the giant.

"Tetsuo!" Yamato's voice cut through the din of battle. "Take him out!"

Snapped out of his trance, the boy swung up his rifle and took aim at the chieftain's head. He was the best marksman in the squad. He could make this shot…

The beast's head swung in his direction, its red eyes blazing with malice, and Tetsuo froze, paralyzed by the sudden realization that _it was looking right at him._

"What are you waiting for?" Yamato yelled. "Take the shot!"

Tetsuo did nothing, transfixed by the monster's hateful glare.

"Tetsuo!"

The lasgun was shaking in his hands. He couldn't move.

"Tetsuo! Take the shot or we're all dead!"

A roar of thunder split the air. Tetsuo brought his rifle up, began to squeeze the trigger…

A raindrop hit the lasgun, splashing him in the eye. He recoiled, and the chieftain exploded with hideous laughter as the shot went wide.

Tetsuo went white as a sheet, knowing without a doubt that he'd just doomed them all.

Thunder rumbled overhead, the giant stomping towards the trench as the rain began to fall heavily. The other Oni stood by, grinning, waiting for the slaughter to come. The sounds of lasfire continued to ring out, but at a distance, from other squads on parts of the battlefield; Tetsuo's fellows had stopped firing, staring with dread at the chieftain's approaching form.

Tetsuo took half a step back, then stood his ground. No, he told himself, he wouldn't run away; if this was to be his end, then by the Celestial King he would meet it head-on, not with his back turned like a coward.

He drew his combat knife with shaking hands, drawing a peel of mocking laughter from the chieftain.

A bolt of lightning flared off in the distance, throwing the chieftain's silhouette into stark relief, and with it came the roar of thunder.

He frowned. It might have been just his imagination, but for a moment he could have sworn there was a second roar hidden beneath that first one…

Then the sound grew louder, rising in pitch and volume, and he realized that it wasn't just his imagination. The Oni heard it too, for they all looked up in confusion.

Tetsuo looked up as well, and his eyes went wide at what he saw.

Great balls of fire were raining down from the sky, like shooting stars plucked from the heavens.

Tetsuo could only blink in bafflement. "What…?"

That was all he had time to say, for suddenly the battlefield was shaking violently as those balls of fire began to hit the ground. Men and Oni alike cried out in shock and alarm as these impacts knocked them off their feet, and Tetsuo staggered as a wave of pressure passed over him, bringing up an arm to shield his eyes from a sudden storm of dust. It felt like a titan of myth was punching the earth with all its might, trying to unmake the battlefield.

"What's going on?!" he yelled to no one in particular.

The dust cleared a moment later, and a strange hissing sound drew his attention towards the right. His eyebrows rose as he beheld something that most assuredly had not been there a moment ago; some thirty metres away there now stood a great metal pod, as wide as a small house and taller besides, its broad, angular surfaces painted green and black. And there, etched on the side facing him, was an icon that he recognized immediately—a golden eagle with two heads, the sacred emblem of the Celestial King.

Before Tetsuo's astonished eyes the object began to split open, its sides unfurling dramatically like the petals of some giant sakura blossom. Cries of pain came from some of the Oni as the great petals slammed down, crushing them beneath their immense weight. Then gouts of flame erupted from the pod's interior, and those cries were doubled as those beasts fortunate enough to escape being crushed caught fire.

Snarling, the chieftain turned and sprinted away, barking orders at the other Oni in its guttural tongue. Tetsuo watched its flight in a daze, noting that yet more pods were now scattered across the battlefield, and that they too were now opening to unleash torrents of fire on the surrounding greenskins. Were these the shooting stars?

Movement by the first pod, the nearest, drew his attention back to it, and his mouth dropped open at what emerged from its depths.

Seven warriors walked down the pod's ramps, towering giants clad head to toe in suits of bulky green armour. Enormous pauldrons covered their shoulders, most of them painted black and adorned with emblems of fire and the snarling heads of golden dragons, though in one warrior's case the right shoulder guard was instead white and bore the image of a strange, winged red helix. Many of them carried enormous guns the likes of which Tetsuo had never seen, their muzzles preceded by flickering tongues of blue flame. One man carried an enormous pole at least three times taller than he was, from which hung a great tapestry depicting the fire-snorting head of horned green dragon, holding it one-handed in a way that suggested familiarity with the enormous standard. The man with the white pauldron also had a white helmet, and carried a sword whose blade was lined with serrated shards like teeth.

As awe-inspiring as these warriors were, they were as nothing compared to the man who was obviously their leader. Clutching a massive hammer whose head crackled with lightning in both hands, he bore elaborate designs and gold traceries on his armour. A cloak of enormous scales hung about his shoulders, making Tetsuo shudder with wonder at what sort of beast the scales could have come from…and how the warrior might have taken them. Rolls of parchment were affixed to his armour by wax seals, fluttering in the breeze, and crests like flaring wings rose from his grimacing skull helmet.

The boy had never seen anything like these warriors in his life, but he knew what they were. He had heard tales of their exploits all the time growing up, enough to recognize them on sight. A profound sense of awe settled over him as he realized that he was standing in the presence of beings who were more than mortal, the greatest defenders of mankind.

"Shinigami," he breathed. "Space Marines…"

The cloaked warrior turned to his comrades and thrust his hammer into the air. "We must drive back the greenskins, my brothers!" he proclaimed, his voice like thunder. "Get them back from the trenches, and give the civilians time to fall back within the city walls. Into the fires of battle!" he boomed.

"Unto the anvil of war!" the other warriors answered in unison, their voices shaking the battlefield.

And with this battle cry the Space Marines turned and began to wade into the Oni, their guns spewing great streams of flame that burned the greenskins to ash in seconds. Dozens of the beasts died in the time it took Tetsuo to blink, their cries and howls of agony barely audible over the roar of the Shinigami's weapons.

"They're like dragons," he breathed.

At his side, Yamato let out a whistle. "Now there's something you don't see every day," he said, the older man's usual flippancy not quite able to conceal his awe. "Quite a sight, aren't they?"

Tetsuo could only nod dumbly. What could he possibly say? There were no words to describe the awesome sight of the Celestial King's divine warriors unleashing their might upon the Oni, at least none that could do it justice. It inspired in him a panoply of feelings—awe, at the mighty warriors themselves and how they strode so confidently across the battlefield; terror, at how efficiently, brutally and dispassionately they slaughtered the Oni…

And hope, for now the odds were back on their side. Now they had a chance; now they could win this!

Smiling, the boy crossed his hands over his chest and made the sign of the two-headed eagle, offering a silent prayer of thanks to the Celestial King. "Kami protects…"

* * *

**Author's Note:** And so the cavalry has arrived. Tune in next week as the 'Shinigami' unleash the Emperor's fury upon the greenskin hordes!


	2. The Angels of Death

**Author's Note:** Thank you, those of you who took the time to post reviews of this story, insubstantial though some of those reviews were. I know that Outlander has a bit of an odd and possibly alienating premise for this setting, so perhaps this chapter will help to set your minds at ease.

Also, I should not that this story does not actually take place in M41; it's set at an earlier date, an unspecified year towards the end of M38. As such, I would not expect to see any characters from the codices or Nick Kyme's Tome Of Fire novels, which I regrettably have not read. Ironically, that also means there will be no Tau as they haven't expanded far enough to bump into the Imperium yet. Oh, well...

* * *

**The Angels of Death**

Captain Sar'khon Voltaire of the Salamanders Third Company strode into the fires of battle, his pace unhurried and sure, his cloak of firedrake scales billowing in the heat of the flames. All around him his battle-brothers tore into the feral orks, immolating the creatures in droves with scathing blasts from their flamers. The agonized wails and howls of the xenos as they burned to death was like sweet music to the Captain's ears.

He swept his gaze left and right as he advanced, status runes and tactical displays overlaying his field of vision. Such a riot of colours and icons would have been bewildering to a less-experienced mind, but Sar'khon, who had earned three golden services studs in his time as a Space Marine and was well on his way to a fourth, was well-accustomed to diverting his attention between his helmet's displays and the battlefield.

Half a dozen greenskins emerged from the smoke and flames a short distance ahead, their furs ablaze and their jaws hanging open in animal yowls of pain and fury. They came to a halt as they caught sight of him, then roared and broke into a charge, their ramshackle guns barking noisily as they bore down on him.

Sar'khon stopped and planted his feet wide, eyes narrowing as the orks' crude bullets bounced harmlessly from the gilded plates of his artificer armour. The captain's fingers tightened their grip on the haft of Daemonbane, the thunder hammer's head crackling with lightning as if in anticipation.

At seeing him stop a more intelligent foe might have faltered, might have felt an inkling of fear as they laid eyes on his mighty hammer and realized that it would be more conducive to their survival to stay out of his reach. But orks had little sense of self-preservation, feral orks like these even less so; and the greenskins continued their charge, baying like the rabid curs they were as they continued to fire on him pointlessly.

It was not until they had gotten within three metres of the Captain, and Sar'khon had already begun to swing his weapon, that the aliens realized they had made a terrible mistake. And by then it was too late; a roar of thunder split the air as the Salamander smote all six of his foes with a single blow of Daemonbane, and their broken bodies went flying through the air for dozens of feet in all directions.

Sar'khon did not even wait for his assailants' corpses to hit the ground; already he was in motion once more, assessing the tactical situation as he walked.

"Squad Ogoun, the orks are making for a gap in your formation," he said over the vox. "Close ranks and cut them off. Squad Zarxes, concentrate fire on the northwestern approach; the greenskins are massing for a charge, I don't want any of them to get through. Squad Khonsu, a Nob is directing its subordinates at these coordinates; get in there and take it out before it can rally the horde."

Three runes on his tactical display flashed green in acknowledgement, and over the screams of the dying and the roar of flames came the pounding staccato of heavy bolter fire as Squad Zarxes carried out his orders. At the same time there came a keening screech like the sound of a diving hawk, and at the corner of his field of vision he saw the assault marines of Squad Khonsu rise into the air on great pillars of flame, their jump packs carrying them over the battlefield in a high arc that would bring them down right on top of their target.

An ululating screech from somewhere close by drew his attention to the left. Bearing down on him was the bulbous, pink-skinned form of a squig, its serrated teeth glistening with drool and its body laden with crude explosives. Mildly impressed that these bombs hadn't been cooked off by the heat of his forces' flamers, Sar'khon drew his bolt pistol and shot the creature, the mass-reactive shell blowing its spherical body into bloody chunks and causing the bombs to explode in a cloud of shrapnel.

Opening a general channel, he holstered his gun and continued on his way. "All squads, be advised: the orks are now employing squigs as suicide bombers. If you see a squig, take it out before it can get close; these explosives may be crude, but at close range the shrapnel will likely penetrate even ceramite."

He paused as a particularly large ork—not quite a Nob and definitely not the Warboss, but still bigger than the average greenskin—lunged out of the flames at him, a spiked cudgel held overhead in preparation for a two-handed, skull-cracking blow. Sar'khon didn't give it the chance; his hand shot out to grab the ork by its throat, and with a single efficient twist he threw it to the ground. Then, before the stunned xeno could recover its wits, he brought his armoured sole down on the creature's head, crushing it underfoot like an overripe fruit.

"The eyes of the Primarch and the Emperor are upon us, Salamanders," he continued, as if nothing had happened. "Do not disappoint them!"

"None shall find us wanting, Captain!" called the voice of Veteran Sergeant N'Mani, his second in command; moments later the other sergeants whose squads made up the Third Company echoed this solemn vow.

The battle was going well, Sar'khon saw. Though the orks were beginning to overcome their shock at the Salamanders' sudden, fiery entrance into the fray, it wasn't enough; greenskins were dropping like flies, dispatched by flamer and boltgun, by chainsword and thunder hammer, by meltagun and combat knife. And while the Salamanders had suffered casualties so far—Brother M'Baku, whose squad ran afoul of a pack of ork commandos and who took two of the greenskins with him as he died; or Scout Gorman, felled by a cowardly knife to the back from a gretchin even as he took the head off a Nob seventy yards away—they were by and far lighter than the orks' losses. Slowly but surely, the Third Company was forcing the greenskins back.

It was fortunate for the people of Seiryuu that the strike cruiser _Promethean Anvil_ had been in such a good position to respond to their distress call, he reflected. The Third Company, having recently completed a five-year campaign to put down an insurrection backed by traitor marines of the Alpha Legion in the nearby Neraka system, had been on its way back to Nocturne to resupply and replenish their forces. When the ship's astropaths had received word that the isolated feudal world was caught in the grip of a feral ork uprising, Sar'khon had not hesitated in ordering the _Anvil_ to divert course and come to their aid; even with his forces reduced to eight squads—five Tactical Squads, one Assault and two Devastators—from the usual twelve by the Neraka campaign, the Third Company was more than adequate for the task at hand.

Some Space Marine chapters might have balked at such a request for aid, or ignored it entirely; compared to the great challenge of quelling the system-spanning Waaaghs of more technologically-advanced greenskins, these chapters might have seen the task of putting down feral orks as beneath them. Such Space Marines might have left the planet Seiryuu to its fate, and ventured elsewhere in search of greater foes and greater glory.

The Salamanders were not such a chapter, and Sar'khon was not such a Space Marine. He did not forget, as some did, that as Space Marines their duty was to protect the Imperium as a whole—that the common masses of humanity _were_ the Imperium, and deserved the protection of the Space Marines from all the myriad horrors this uncaring galaxy could throw at them.

Three orks mounted atop slavering boars came charging out of the smoke at him, howling with bloodlust as they brandished crude hatchets, the lead beast lowering its head to bring tusks as long and thick as an ordinary man's arm to bear. He brought his bolt pistol up and fired twice, his shots pitching the two trailing riders from their mounts. Oblivious to its comrades' demise the lead rider continued on, his snorting steed bearing down on Sar'khon at full speed. The Salamander held his ground until the last possible moment, then twisted aside and used the momentum of his turn to fuel a powerful, one-handed swing of Daemonbane. Ork and boar alike were sent flying by the blow, their howls and squeals of pain drowned out by the roar of the thunder hammer's mighty impact. The surviving mounts veered away from him, squealing in fear.

"Drive these alien fiends back to the dark pit whence they came!" he boomed, thrusting Daemonbane skyward. "Leave not a single ork on this battlefield alive!"

* * *

Tetsuo recoiled as an Oni and its nago mount fell out of the sky before him, landing not three metres from the trench in a tangled heap of broken limbs. The greenskin twitched fitfully, moaning in pain; one of those beady red eyes focused on him, and the monster's brutish brows furrowed as it slowly began crawling towards him.

It had scarcely covered half a metre before Tetsuo brought up his lasgun and put the creature out of its misery with a single shot to the head.

"That's showing 'em, Tetsuo!" Laughing, Yamato hocked loudly and spat at the creature's corpse. "Give these Oni bastards what-for."

The boy didn't answer, staring off in the direction the Oni had come from. Something had sent this monster flying through the air, and while it was difficult to see anything of the battlefield through the fire and flames, he had a pretty good idea what—or who—had done this.

As if on cue the fires parted for just a second, giving him a glimpse of that cloaked Space Marine as it felled three greenskins with a single blow of that massive hammer before bringing up a boxy gun to shoot a fourth Oni in the face. The monster's head exploded into gobbets of meat, and it had just begun to topple over when the flames swept in once more, concealing the battle.

"Amazing," Tetsuo breathed, unaware that he was thinking out loud. "Their power, their strength…they truly are Shinigami, the gods of death."

He watched, transfixed, as the emerald warriors made short work of the Oni. With their flame-spewing dragon-guns, with snarling swords full of teeth that roared as they bit into green flesh, with strange bulbs on their backpacks that launched them into the air on pillars of fire, the Space Marines drove the horde back. Dozens of the monsters were dying every second, burnt to ash or hacked to pieces or blown to bloody chunks or pulverized and sent flying by that crackling hammerhead. In minutes, the sons of the Celestial King were doing what the defenders of Murosaki hadn't managed to do in a week of constant fighting from the trenches.

They taught the Oni fear.

The other soldiers began to cheer, pumping their fists in victory. Yamato slapped a hand across his back, nearly knocking him from his feet, but Tetsuo didn't mind. A smile came to the boy's face. They were going to live; they were going to win this!

Then he heard a sound like the rumbling of thunder over the din of battle, and felt the ground rumble beneath his feet.

The cheers died down, and Tetsuo's smile faded away as the sound and the rumbles grew stronger. It almost felt like…footsteps…

In the distance, an enormous silhouette gradually came into view through the rain and the smoke. Too far away to make out clearly, it moved slowly, towering over the battlefield like someone had set a hill in motion.

The boy's eyes widened, the colour draining from his face. "Heaven's Throne…"

"What the hell is _that?!_" Yamato exclaimed, his brash indifference replaced with very real fear.

It came on four muscular legs, each one thicker than the thickest pine trees of Seiryuu's great arboreal forests. Scales the colour of lime covered its massive body, titanic muscles flexing with every ponderous, earth-shaking step. Mammoth tusks jutted from a jaw so long and massive that its mouth could not close, hanging perpetually open to leave pointed teeth as long as a grown man's leg proudly on display. A great horn grew between beady little red eyes, thick brows like armour plates and raised as if in an angry frown.

In and of itself this colossal monstrosity would have been bad enough, but the Oni had left their mark on this beast. Thick plates of rusting metal covered the behemoth's back like some absurd mockery of barding, held in place by thick chains which clattered and jangled noisily with every step. Atop this armour sat what could only be described as a fortress, a ramshackle tower built of the same corroded plating; spikes and skull icons studded this tower, and dozens of greenskins poked out of narrow gun ports, their crude weapons panning back and forth in search of targets.

Gradually slowing to a halt, the beast reared up on its hind legs and let out a roar that drowned out the sounds of the battle and the storm. It brought its feet down, and every last person on the battlefield—man, Oni, and Space Marine alike—_jumped_ in unison.

An answering bellow tore through the air, and through the press of bodies Tetsuo could just barely make out the pole standard and tiger-pelt cloak of the Oni chieftain. It clambered up the monster's side, coming to stand atop the fortress, where it spread its arms wide and threw back its head with an awful cry. "WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAGH!"

"WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAGH!" the horde roared as one, and then the beast was lumbering into motion once more, bearing down on Murosaki and its defenders with all the grace of an avalanche.

Tetsuo's blood ran cold. "Oh, no…"

* * *

Sar'khon studied the approaching warbeast grimly. This complicated matters a great deal.

"All squads, concentrate fire on that squiggoth," he voxed. "Bring that beast down before it can reach the city walls; the orks must not be allowed to reach the civilians. Scouts, do you have a clear shot at the Warboss?"

"Negative, Brother-Captain," came the voice of Scout Sun'diata. "The greenskin warlord is no fool; he's hidden himself inside the armature. I can see him through the gun ports, but the beast is moving around too much for me to line up a shot—and he won't stay still."

The Captain grimaced. He had hoped that they might be able to take the Warboss out now, and kill the horde's momentum while they were still recovering it; such a demoralizing blow would have scattered the greenskins and sent them running, squiggoth or no. Alas, any chance of a quick and easy victory was now lost. Now the Third Company faced a much harder battle than the one they'd walked into.

"Any battle-brothers who can, instruct the mortal defenders to fall back within the city walls." Against such a mammoth beast, their lasguns would be almost useless; the deadly beams they fired, while lethal to unarmoured humans and orks, would have no more effect on the squiggoth's thick hide than a cloud of gnats swarming a grox. Better they return to a position of safety than expose themselves to danger needlessly.

Several runes on his tactical display flashed with acknowledgement. At the same time, the air came alive with the pounding of heavy bolters, the roar of flamers, the snarl of chainswords and the unmistakable sound of meltaguns as those squads nearest the squiggoth cut loose. The beast lowed in anger, the flames lapping at its scaly hide and the bolt rounds blasting small divots into its flesh; but such wounds were barely an inconvenience to such an enormous monster, and it lumbered on, its stride broken for only a moment.

Sar'khon opened another channel as he observed the carnage, this one to the _Promethean Anvil_ holding position directly above the battlefield in geosynchronous orbit. "Brother Kraft."

"Yes, Captain?" The Techmarine's voice was laden with static.

"The situation has become much more difficult than I anticipated. Rouse Brother Amadi and get him deployed as soon as possible."

Kraft hesitated. "I shall do that as quickly as I can, Captain, but the rites take some time—"

"And time is of the essence," Sar'khon said, not unkindly. "Hurry them along as best you can, old friend. Innocent lives depend on it."

"I understand. Kraft out."

Closing the channel, the captain tightened his grip on Daemonbane's haft, fixed the approaching squiggoth with a look, and strode briskly towards the monstrosity. He had never faced such a creature before, at least not in melee combat; dwarfing him by a considerable margin, the gargantuan war-beast could easily crush him underfoot or swallow him whole in a single gulp.

This would be interesting.

* * *

The monstrous creature turned its head as it reached the Space Marines, its pace slowing markedly before it swept those massive tusks through a great arc. Tetsuo looked on in horror as half a dozen of the emerald-armoured warriors went flying, the force of this blow hurling them into the air like leaves swept up in a punishing gale; it took several long seconds for them to reach the ground, and only three of the six managed to rise to their feet.

Undaunted by the deaths of their comrades the other Shinigami continued to fire, unleashing the full force of their wrath on the lumbering beast. They were wounding it, that much was perfectly clear from the bloody pockmarks riddling its hide and the angry roars it let out. But they were not stopping it.

"You there!" A voice cut through the din like a thunderclap, coming from somewhere close at hand. The boy turned towards it, and saw one of the Space Marines standing not twenty feet away, a dragon-gun clutched in one hand as it pointed directly at Tetsuo. "Fall back to the city walls; the orks will try to force their way through while our attention is focused on the squiggoth! You must not let them breach the defences!"

The Oni's brutal battle cry rang out once more as if to puncture that statement, and beyond the Shinigami Tetsuo could see the greenskins were massing for a charge alongside their chieftain's colossal mount. Savage brutes astride slavering dire boars ranged ahead of the horde, wooping as they waved cudgels and hatchets overhead; twelve of them were bearing down on this very trench, a pack led by a larger Oni mounted on the largest beast, coming towards the Space Marine from behind!

"Look out!" he shouted.

The Shinigami whirled, his dragon-gun roaring as it spat out a torrent of searing flames. Several of the monsters were caught in the blast and howled in agony as they were burned to ash, but the leader of the pack spurred his mount onward and it surged ahead, narrowly avoiding the fire. Hooting like some mountain ape, the brute swung its spiked club in a vicious arc meant to take off the Space Marine's head; the emerald warrior twisted aside, but in the process the Oni's weapon clipped the dragon-gun and knocked it out of his hands.

"Damnation!" the Shinigami cursed, drawing a vicious knife from a sheath at his hip and a boxy pistol from the other. He fired twice, killing the pack-leader and its mount before it could reach the trenches, then twisted aside as another rider charged him and drove his blade deep into the boar's side, wringing a squeal of agony from it. "Fall back, mortals; I shall cover you. Go, now!"

The rest of the squad was only too happy to oblige, hauling themselves out of the trench in a hurry and turning to run for the safety of the city walls.

Tetsuo did not move, transfixed by the sight of the armoured giant as it fought off the riders. Even outnumbered and deprived of its terrifying dragon-gun, the Space Marine fought viciously, slashing and stabbing at anything that came too close and taking shots whenever his assailants left him an opening. Blood spattered across those emerald plates and stained the blade of that knife a ruddy crimson. The air was filled with groans and squeals as he left the Oni and their mounts dead or dying, the greenskins hurling themselves at him like lambs to the slaughter.

Yamato grabbed Tetsuo by the shoulder and gave him a rough shake. "Snap out of it, kid!" he hissed. "We've gotta go!"

Shaken out of his trance, the boy nodded. He started to haul himself out of the trench, casting a reluctant look back towards the raging battle—

And that was when he saw it. One of those bulbous, pink-skinned creatures was running towards the Shinigami, its mouth hanging open and its body covered with what were unmistakably explosives. The Space Marine had his back to the monster, and seemed oblivious to the threat; so caught up in the butchering of these Oni, he didn't hear its approach.

Tetsuo swung up his lasgun and took aim, leading the fast-moving creature. He had to make this quick…

There!

He pulled the trigger, and a beam of deadly red light lanced from the barrel to spear the creature through its eye. It collapsed mere feet from the Space Marine, its deadly cargo undetonated.

The son of the Celestial King tore his knife from the skull of the last of the Oni and spun around, his gaze dropping to the lifeless would-be bomber with clear surprise. The warrior turned to face Tetsuo then, his thoughts unreadable behind that grimacing skull of a helmet; then the Space Marine gave him a nod. "Excellent shot, mortal. You have my thanks."

A thrill of elation passed through Tetsuo. A Shinigami, one of these unstoppable and terrifying lords of war, had just complimented his marksmanship!

"Y…you're welcome, sir," he stammered.

But the Space Marine had already turned away, striding over to where his dragon-gun had fallen and stooping to pick it up. Properly armed once more, the mighty warrior straightened up to his full height and fixed Tetsuo with a look. "Now fall back, the pair of you. More orks will be coming."

And with those words he turned away, his tone leaving no room for argument.

Yamato shook Tetsuo once more. "Congratulations, you've scored brownie points with a Space Marine." The boy thought he heard a note of envy beneath the older man's dry wit. "Now let's get going, already."

"Yeah," the boy said breathlessly. "Let's go."

Without another word he slung his lasgun over his shoulders, clambered out of the trench and began hurrying towards the city walls, keeping his head down to avoid any Oni gunfire that might have made it this far.

* * *

The squiggoth swung its head through another ponderous arc, sweeping the remaining battle-brothers of Squad Ogoun from their feet with its massive tusks. It lumbered on, heedless of their deaths, barely inconvenienced by all the firepower the Third Company unleashed upon it, the greenskins within the tower on its back filling the air with haphazard and inaccurate fire from their crude gun emplacements.

Sar'khon strode forth to meet it head-on. He was under no illusions that he could stop such a mammoth monstrosity, given the vast disparity in size; it would be an utterly trivial thing for the war-beast to fling him into the sky as it had already done twice now, or to crush him underfoot as easily as he might squash a fly. That it was all but ignoring the collective fire of the seven squads under his command only further reinforced this notion.

He could not stop it alone…but by Vulkan, he could definitely slow it down.

The vox-bead in his ear crackled with static. "The rites are nearly complete, Captain," said Kraft. "I need only a few more minutes."

Sar'khon lengthened his stride. "Then you shall have them."

He broke into a run, the firedrake cloak billowing in his wake. A Nob spotted his onrushing form and lumbered into his path, bellowing a challenge; the Captain did not even slow down, barrelling into the greenskin with a vicious shoulder charge and bowling it over. He did not stop to finish the prone alien off but continued his sprint, drawing ever closer to his gargantuan target. As he ran he studied the beast, paying significant attention to that fortress and the barding on which it sat. The armature was a sturdy thing, despite its ramshackle construction, but it did not look at all secure; it swayed ever-so-slightly with every ponderous step the beast took.

Sar'khon's gaze drifted lower, to the chains holding the monster's armour in place. They seemed somewhat loose to his eyes, and poorly-suited for the task at hand; if even a few of them were to be broken, he imagined the entire assembly might fall apart or slide off.

A grim smile came to the Salamander's lips. An interesting theory; perhaps it was time to put it to the test.

He was close now, close enough to smell the squiggoth's foul stench even through the toxin-filters of his helmet and register the heat of its rancid breath on his warplate. The squiggoth noticed him as well, and it let out a snort of irritation as it turned its head, preparing to bat him aside with those tusks.

He threw himself into a forward dive, and the monster's tusks struck nothing but air. Rolling to his feet beneath the animal's neck, he looked up; three lengths of chain rattled overhead, wrapped around a throat as thick as a dreadnought chassis. Planting his feet, Sar'khon gripped the haft of Daemonbane tightly and swung the thunder hammer through a broad arc, its head flaring as it struck the creature's neck.

The squiggoth howled in pain and reared up on its hind legs, the chatter of orkish gunfire grinding to a halt to be replaced by cries of fear, surprise and indignation. It brought its legs down with meteoric force, and Sar'khon threw himself to one side, narrowly managing to avoid getting caught beneath one of those massive feet. The entire battlefield _shook_ with the force of this impact; at the same time, there came a clattering of loose chains and a foreboding groan of metal under incredible stress. As he rolled to his feet, Sar'khon was pleased to see that he'd broken all three lengths with that one swing; the severed chains whipped about as the beast trembled in fury, the barding they held in place shifting visibly now that it was free. That his blow had wounded the monster enough to halt its advance, even if only temporarily, was only a bonus.

Even so, he did not allow himself to celebrate just yet. The barding and the fortress were more firmly secured than he'd thought, and while they'd begun to sway and shift more than they had already, they clearly weren't in any danger of falling off at the moment. He would have to rectify that.

He ran towards the beast's fatty underbelly, where more of the chains had been used to strap its armour in place. Dodging a stomp from the infuriated squiggoth, he swung his hammer and pulverized another link, leaning back to avoid getting struck by the now-flailing length as it whipped about.

"Oi!" A guttural voice rang out from somewhere overhead and to his right. "Wot do ya fink yer doin', 'umie? Get yer 'ands off me ride!"

Sar'khon turned towards the sound and saw what was unmistakably the Warboss clambering down a crude ladder built into the side of the armature—no small feat, considering its hands were full carrying both a combi-weapon and a primitive but functional chainaxe. The enormous greenskin let go and dropped the rest of the way down, landing with a grunt; the tiger pelt it wore as a cloak was torn and blackened with scorch marks, and fury blazed in its tiny red eyes.

"You an' yer shiny green gits ain't gonna mess wif me anymore," it growled in hideously mangled Low Gothic. "I don't care if ya dun fell outta da sky; dis is _my_ turf, an' _my_ Waaagh! I'm Boss Tygakilla, an' I's gonna take yer head fer me—!"

The rest of the ork's threat died unspoken. Sar'khon brought his bolt pistol up in the middle of 'Tiger-killer's' rant and fired a single shot, blowing the alien's face apart in a shower of meaty gobbets. He watched impassively as the Warboss' decapitated body toppled over, then turned his attention back to the task at hand. This was no time to be getting embroiled in combat with such a creature, not when he was still beneath an infuriated squiggoth.

Still, the damned ork was dead now. Once the rest of its horde realized this fact, the ruin such knowledge would wreak upon their morale would be terrible.

Once again, he heard the voice of Brother Kraft. "The rites have been completed, Captain; he is on his way."

Scarcely had the Techmarine finished saying these words than Sar'khon caught a sound like the rumbling of distant thunder, and he turned to see a flaming star fall from the heavens.

* * *

Tetsuo tracked the star's descent from the safety of the city walls, flinching as it struck the ground some distance from the creature that Shinigami had called a skwigguth. It threw up a great cloud of dust, partially obscuring it from view, but even so the boy could clearly see that it was another one of those great metal pods the Space Marines had arrived in. Like those that had preceded it, the pod's sides split open and unfurled like the petals of a flower in bloom.

Unlike the others, however, no torrents of flame spat out of its depths as it did this. And unlike the others, what emerged a moment later was not another group of the emerald-armoured warriors.

It emerged on two short, wide-set legs that seemed far too small to support its great bulk, a steel giant that towered over Oni and Space Marine alike. Easily as big as a house, it was as wide as it was tall, and its top-heavy frame was painted in the same green, gold and black hues as the Shinigami themselves. Where there should have been arms on a normal person, there were only weapons—two massive gun barrels easily several times longer than Tetsuo was tall sat where the right arm should have been, a pair of grey cylinders poking from what he thought of as the giant's shoulder; and where the left arm should have gone, there was a boxy pod studded with a dozen recessed spikes.

"Now what the hell is that thing?" Yamato murmured, scratching his head in puzzlement.

Tetsuo had no response.

The giant turned towards the skwigguth, its upper body moving independently of its legs in a way that the boy found profoundly unnatural, and both its 'arms' turned upwards slightly as if it were taking aim at the beast.

It spoke then, in a voice so loud that it could be heard clearly even from hundreds of feet away and so deep, so unnatural, that it could only have come from the pits of hell. Tetsuo shivered as the impossibly deep voice swept over him, shaking him to his core.

"I AM AMADI, ALIEN," it said. "I AM DEATH INCARNATE."

Then it opened fire, and Tetsuo could only clap his hands over his hears as the roar of its weapons drowned out the storm.

* * *

The squiggoth brayed in agonized fury under Brother Amadi's assault, backing away from him and his lethal barrage. The Dreadnought's twin-linked autocannons stitched parallel lines of bloody divots across the war-beast's flanks, shattering its tusks and putting out one of its eyes. Missiles streaked from their housings on fiery contrails, hammering the armature atop the monster's back in a series of staggered impacts.

It was a testament to the greenskins' peculiar mastery of technology in that the battle-fortress could withstand such a punishing assault. Metal plating blackened with every blast, deformed, bent inward, but somehow remained unbroken, the orks within rattled but otherwise unharmed.

But while Amadi's missiles weren't destroying the armature, they _were_ forcing it over. Every strike made the entire assembly rock, every explosion making it sway ominously, and the thrashing of the squiggoth as he pumped round after round after round into its body, the anti-tank shells making a bloody ruin of its scaly hide where all else had been but an annoyance, only served to exacerbate the situation. Without intact chains to hold them in place, it was only a matter of time before the fortress and the barding it sat upon surrendered to gravity's pull.

Sar'khon watched from a safe distance as the squiggoth reared up, smiling in satisfaction as this last, frenzied movement finally did the trick. With a low, drawn-out groan of tortured metal, the armature began to slide down the creature's back—slowly at first, but sliding faster and faster with every passing heartbeat. Cries of alarm and panic began to sound from within as the orks still inside realized that their doom was at hand, and several of the greenskins dove out of the armature from whatever holes they could fit through.

Then at last it came free, falling to the ground with a great crash, kicking up a cloud of dust as it collapsed into a broken heap.

At the same time, Brother Amadi did not let this opportunity go to waste, firing missiles and autocannon rounds at the more-vulnerable flesh of the creature's underbelly, stitching a line of bloody ruin up the creature's underside from gizzard to gullet. With a final, desperate groan the war-beast collapsed, hitting the ground with enough force to upset the Captain's balance, its innards and vital fluids flowing out of its ruined belly to stain the earth.

For a moment, silence reined over the battlefield in the wake of this titanic impact.

Then a cry of pure, unadulterated terror tore itself from hundreds of greenskin mouths, and without any sort of cohesion the surviving orks turned tail and ran, retreating towards the forest in a blind panic. Their wails of lament had scarcely begun to fade when a cheer came from the defenders stationed atop the city walls, who pumped their fists and fired their guns into the air in celebration as they watched the aliens flee.

In less than an hour, the Salamanders had brought an end to the Siege of Murosaki.

Smiling, Sar'khon turned to face his squads and rested a hand atop Daemonbane's head. "Battle-brothers," he announced, "We are victorious this day. Status!"

"All squads report minor casualties, Brother-Captain." Veteran Sergeant N'Mani approached from the left, his normally impeccable armour scuffed and spattered with blood. The Captain could not help noticing that his second-in-command's flamer was also scuffed and battered, and found himself raising an eyebrow.

"Have you taken to using your flamer as a club, Sergeant?" he asked. "I can't imagine its machine-spirit will be pleased with such misuse."

Sar'khon could hear the smile in N'Mani's words when the veteran next spoke. "No, sir. One of the orks managed to knock it out of my hands. Clever of the damned brute, but it didn't save him."

"And your armour?"

"His friends sought to avenge him," he explained. "I have to give them credit for trying; they almost made me break a sweat."

Sar'khon nodded. "And what of Squad Ogoun?"

The dry humour faded from N'Mani's tone. "They are all dead, sir; the squiggoth killed them all."

The Captain stifled a curse. Sergeant Ogoun had been a close friend, and a constant companion since they were accepted into the chapter as neophytes all those centuries ago; his loss would be felt for some time. And on a more practical level, with his squad slain to a man and the various casualties incurred by the other squads the Third Company was now operating at half strength or less. Returning to Prometheus to replenish their ranks with fresh battle-brothers was now more important than ever.

"The Apothecary shall have his work cut out for him today," he said sombrely.

N'Mani could only nod in silent accord.

* * *

**Author's Note:** Yes, I know the warboss' demise was somewhat anticlimactic. That said, he's a feral ork rather than one of the more advanced ones; he doesn't have any bionics or Mega-Armour that might allow him to survive a point-blank shot to the face.

And so the battle ends, but our tale is just beginning. Tune in next week as the Salamanders get a look at the local colour, and Tetsuo comes to an important decision.


	3. A New Path

**A New Path**

Atop the walls of Murosaki prefecture, exuberance held sway. After more than a week of maddened, soul-destroying fighting in the trenches, it was finally over; the Oni had been sent running with their tails between their legs, and not once had they managed to set foot within the city walls to do harm to the innocent women and children within. To say that the militiamen were glad would have been an understatement; they were thrilled, not only with their victory but with the fact that they were still alive to enjoy it. And while there may have been some grumbling about the fact that it was the Shinigami who'd won the battle, robbing the brave defenders of their rightful glory, these were by and far in the minority. Backs were slapped, jokes were traded, lho-sticks were shared, drinks were quaffed, and merriment was had by all.

Only one person, it seemed, was not sharing in the general good cheer. For Osamu Tetsuo, the feeling of elation had passed, and troubling questions had risen to take its place, questions he had no real answers to. What was he supposed to do with himself, now that the fight was over? Go home? Takuoka was gone; his home and his family were nothing but ash. Stay here in the city? And do what, eke out a sad excuse for a living as some beggar? He had no relatives here; there was no place for him to stay.

Leaning against the parapets, the boy let out a weary sigh. The Oni may have been beaten, and he may have survived this last hellish week, but there was no question that they had destroyed his life. There was no going back to the way things were; there was nothing for him to go back to.

His gaze drifted to the muddy plains beyond the city, where the leader of the Space Marines was giving a speech to his subordinates. Where would they go, now that the battle was done? Would they return to the heavens to stand at the foot of the Celestial King? Would they travel to the distant stars, where grandfather had always said that other children of Man lived, and protect the people there from monsters as they had done here?

Whatever they decided, he imagined they at least knew what their purpose was.

"That must be nice," he murmured, "knowing what you need to do…"

A flicker of green drew his attention back to the battlefield—not the emerald of the Shinigami, but the putrid green of the Oni. One of the tiny ones was approaching the Space Marine king from behind, and though it was too far away for him to make out clearly, it looked like it was carrying some kind of weapon.

All melancholy vanished from his mind. The cloaked warrior seemed oblivious to the greenskin's presence, unaware of the danger now creeping up behind him. Could such a tiny creature do any real harm to such a mighty lord of war?

Perhaps not, but Tetsuo wasn't about to take that chance. He was not about to just stand there and watch this Space Marine be harmed, not when he could do something about it.

He brought up his lasgun once more, racking the charging slide as he took aim at the distant figure. The rifle let out a low, warbling beep, a sound he'd learned meant that it was low on energy. He checked the display and cursed; there was only enough power left for a single shot, and until the sun came out and the weapon could soak in its rays there was no way to recharge it.

Stilling his breath, he took aim once more, leading the tiny little speck of the greenskin as it approached the Shinigami. He literally had only one shot at this; and if he was off by even a fraction, he might hit the Space Marine instead.

Exhaling, he pulled the trigger.

* * *

The unmistakable sound of a lasgun being fired split the air—and at almost the same moment, there came a strangled, high-pitched squawk.

Sar'khon and N'Mani spun around in unison, the latter bringing his flamer to bear and the former hefting his thunder hammer for a powerful swing. Both paused, however, when they saw the source of the noise. Not five feet away teetered a gretchin, one of the orks' diminutive cousins. A pained look of shock was frozen on its face, an expression clearly born of the smoking hole in its chest.

The creature crumpled with a ragged sigh, the oblong form of a crude and simplistic grenade slipping from its nerveless grasp. The pin, fortunately, was still in place.

N'Mani let out a sound of mild surprise. "Fancy that. You and I must be getting rusty in our old age."

Sar'khon did not respond, his brow furrowing. Where had that shot come from just now?

Looking towards the city walls, the Captain squinted, noting what position the gretchin had been standing in and retracing the likely path of the laser which had killed it in his mind's eye. He squinted, and in response his Occulobe 'zoomed in' towards a stretch of parapet that seemed a likely spot for the shot's point of origin. There he saw a militiaman with a lasgun in hand, bracing the gun against the edge of the parapet; as he watched, the man let out a visible sigh of relief and removed his helmet, reaching up to wipe some sweat from his brow.

Sar'khon frowned, mildly surprised at just how young the marksman was.

Following his captain's gaze, N'Mani grunted once more. "Is it that boy again? That's twice now he's saved my life."

"Twice, Sergeant?" the Captain asked, raising an eyebrow.

"Yes, sir," N'Mani admitted with some embarrassment. "During the battle, he killed a bomb squig that was approaching me from behind. I…failed to notice the squig in the heat of battle, surrounded as I was by half a dozen of the greenskins. Had he not intervened, it is entirely possible that we would not be having this conversation now."

Sar'khon hummed thoughtfully, silently intrigued by the fact that the gun had no visible scope. The boy had managed to take out a small, moving target from hundreds of metres away, using nothing but his weapon's iron sights. Impressive…

"Well, whoever he is, the boy is an excellent marksman," he said at length.

"I know, sir. I said as much to him after the fact."

The Captain said nothing, keeping his thoughts to himself. Atop the parapets, an older, scruffier man dressed in the padded uniform of the local militia approached the boy; even from this distance, it was clear from his swaying gait and the gourd-shaped jug he held in one hand that this man was drunk. Sar'khon watched as this newcomer draped an arm over the boy's shoulder, noting that the marksman did not share the other man's good cheer. Why was that so, he wondered…

N'Mani's voice cut his introspection short. "Someone approaches," the veteran said tersely.

Sar'khon blinked, his vision returning to normal. A man was approaching them from the city, a sparsely-dressed and clearly-unarmed fellow who crossed the muddy, battle-ravaged fields at a brisk jog. The two Space Marines lowered their weapons as the runner drew ever closer, finally getting within fifteen feet perhaps half a minute after they'd noticed him. At that point he skidded to a halt, panting from exertion, and dropped respectfully to his knees.

"Forgive…forgive this interruption, Shinigami-sama," he wheezed, his Gothic carrying a mild but noticeable accent. "My master, Lady Mikado, sends her thanks for your quick and decisive resolution of this crisis."

The two Salamanders shared a look. Sar'khon was not overly familiar with the customs and mores of Seiryuu and its people, but he understood enough to know that they employed a wide variety of honorary suffixes when referring to one another. From the context, it seemed clear that 'shinigami' was a local term for Space Marine, and that 'sama' was a term of respect.

Oblivious to their train of thought, the messenger went on. "My lady humbly requests your presence tonight at a celebratory banquet to be held in honour of your triumph."

"And who is this Lady Mikado, messenger?" asked N'Mani.

"She is the daimyo of Murosaki prefecture, Shinigami-sama. Her husband, the Lord Mikado, previously held the position, but after he was slain by the Oni at the start of the siege the title fell to her."

Sar'khon shook his head. "I am afraid we must respectfully decline her offer."

The messenger looked taken aback. "What…what should I say, milord? My lady will want an explanation," he added hastily.

"Tell her that we shinigami still have much to do this night." The Captain turned away, studying the distant treeline. "The feral orks—the Oni, as you call them—have fled in disarray, but if left to their own devices they will eventually return, and then this carnage will begin anew. I will not allow that to happen. We must hunt them down while they are still reeling, still weak, and we must kill them all before they have a chance to recover their strength."

"Is there anything we might do to help, Shinigami-sama?"

Sar'khon turned to face the courier. "Advise your mistress to gather the bodies of the greenskins and burn them," he said. "Orks release spores on death, and if left unchecked these spores will eventually grow into new orks."

A baffled look came over the messenger's face. "They are like plants?"

"Indeed they are; it is one of their most insidious traits. The corpses must be destroyed as soon as possible, to keep future generations from suffering at the hands of these foul creatures."

The messenger bowed at the waist. "I shall give her your response at once. Sayonara, Shinigami-sama."

With those words, he rose to his feet and turned to leave. Sar'khon watched him go, then opened a channel to the _Promethean Anvil._ "Brother Kraft," he began, "the operation was a success. Unfortunately, it was not completed without cost. Squad Ogoun is lost, and all other squads have suffered mild casualties. You must send Thunderhawks to retrieve Brother Amadi, and to recover the dead and the wounded."

The Techmarine's response came back garbled with static, though still intelligible. "I'm afraid that may not be feasible, Brother-Captain. The storm over your position is intensifying; it could disrupt a Thunderhawk's instrumentation with electromagnetic interference, putting the craft and all those aboard at risk."

A brilliant bolt of lightning tore across the sky at that moment, a booming thunderclap following in its wake as if to punctuate Kraft's pronouncement.

Sar'khon eyed the heavens with a scowl, his brow furrowing as great sheets of rain began to fall from on high, the fat droplets beating a steady cadence against his battle-plate. It was not the worst storm he'd ever seen, not by any stretch of the imagination; the Captain had been to countless worlds in his many decades of loyal service, a good number of them featuring weather far more savage and violent than this. He was half-tempted to order Kraft to send the Thunderhawks in regardless, but then thought better of it. The Techmarine had a point, loath as he might have been to admit it; already the storm was interfering with vox-transmissions, and he imagined the effects would be far worse for anything directly within it. Visibility would be practically nonexistent, instruments would be useless. And when the possible havoc that a lightning strike could wreak upon these priceless relics of the chapter entered the equation, there was only one sensible conclusion; it simply wasn't worth the risk, either to his men or to these irreplaceable transports.

"Then we shall simply have to wait out the storm," he said at length, the words tasting foul in his mouth.

"If it is any consolation, Brother-Captain, the storm should not last long. According to the Administratum's censuses and records, Seiryuu's storms are violent but short-lived. It should abate before the end of the next solar day, at the very most."

Sar'khon nodded. "Understood; keep me posted on any further developments. Sar'khon out."

Closing the channel, he glanced at his second in command. "N'Mani, gather the squads," he said tersely. "Those orks cannot have gone far. Hunt them down and wipe them out."

"Consider it done, Captain." The Veteran Sergeant paused, and a note of puzzlement crept into his words. "If I may ask, though, what shall _you_ be doing?"

The Captain turned towards the city walls. "I shall go pay a visit to the daimyo," he said simply. And without another word he set off after the departing form of the messenger, his stride sure and his pace unhurried.

* * *

Within an hour, the brave defenders of Murosaki prefecture found their revelry cut short as runners and couriers issued them new orders. Every able-bodied man who had taken part in the battle was called down from the walls and sent out into the mud once more, given the utterly thankless task of gathering the bodies of the greenskin dead and burning them. Men who had been laughing and patting each other on the back scant minutes before now found themselves grumbling in anger and soaked to the bone, hauling the massive corpses into piles with no small amount of effort.

Daiman Yamato grunted and wheezed as he and another man lifted a carcass from the ground, swung it back and forth a few times, and flung it atop the heap they'd been assigned to. The militiaman was not enjoying the task, to say the very least; the rain was really coming down now, leaving him utterly drenched and freezing, and the constant lifting and dragging and heaving were starting to give his sake-addled mind one hell of a headache.

Grimacing, he pinched his nose pre-emptively as the other members of his squad doused the mound with oil and set it ablaze. It wasn't enough to keep the stench out, and he shuddered in revulsion. "And I thought they smelled bad before…"

He glanced towards the city walls, a scowl coming to his face as he caught sight of the daimyo's palace through the smoke and the driving sheets. It wouldn't surprise him if the members of her court were all living it up and having the time of their lives, now that the greenskins were all dead. Meanwhile, he was out here doing all the backbreaking work. Bunch of ungrateful bastards, the lot of 'em…

He blinked as a thought occurred to him. "Say, where'd Tetsuo get off to?"

"Said he had to take a piss," another man in the squad grumbled. "He left a few minutes ago."

"A few minutes ago?" Yamato frowned dubiously. "That must be one hell of a piss."

He looked towards the city again, his frown deepening. He'd been kind of drunk at the time, but he seemed to remember seeing one of those Shinigami passing through the front gates a while ago… and he remembered Tetsuo watching him like a hawk the whole time.

Yamato shook his head with a sigh. It was pretty obvious that the kid was fascinated by the Space Marines. Had he snuck off to try and meet one?

"He better not do anything stupid…"

* * *

Murosaki prefecture had been built around a small and lonely hill. The castle that served as the city's namesake sat atop this hill, the streets radiating from it like the spokes of a wheel or the strands of a spider's web. The houses and buildings which filled the city walls were typical of Seiryuu's architectural and aesthetic sensibilities: sloping-roofed, rectangular affairs that were densely packed and built low to the ground. With the obvious exception of the castle itself, which was a multi-tiered structure akin to a small mountain, few buildings were taller than two stories, and even these were in short supply.

Osamu Tetsuo stole through streets packed with revellers and celebrants, doing his best not to get overwhelmed by the sights and sounds of a big city in high spirits. This was perhaps the third time in his life that he'd ever experienced the vastness of Murosaki, and even now it was still more than a little bewildering. Were it not for the fact that his destination could be seen from just about anywhere in the city, it would have been trivially easy for him to get lost.

He made his way higher up the hillside, drawing closer and closer to the palace with every step he took—and with every step, he felt his heart beating more and more frantically, like it was trying to leap out of his chest. _What the hell am I doing here?_

He knew the answer, though even now it still puzzled him. He was ditching work and sneaking off to the palace because he wanted to catch a glimpse of that Shinigami, the one whose life he had saved.

_Why_ was he doing such a thing? If he was being honest with himself, this was a question to which the boy had no answer. He could not explain what force had compelled him to abandon his duty, unpleasant though it was, and follow the caped warrior as it strode confidently through the city gates. What would he do if he caught up with the Space Marine? What would he say? What did he even _want_?

The answers to all of these questions eluded him.

Tetsuo let out a sigh. _I really didn't think this through, did I?_

I should turn back, he told himself. The others would have noticed he was missing by now, and if he didn't turn up soon there would be trouble. He would be in even worse trouble if he went through with this; if the palace guards caught him skulking about on the premises, they'd surely throw him into the castle dungeons or worse. Turning back was the only sensible option. He knew this.

And yet, despite this, he hesitated. If he went back, the only thing he would be returning to was the nauseating task of burning Oni; and once that was done, what would he do with himself? Where would he go?

Nothing, and nowhere. There was no future down that path, not anymore. Here, at least, there was the possibility of a future for himself, slight and fraught with risk though it might be.

A determined expression came to his face, and he pressed on. Nothing ventured, nothing gained…

All too soon he found himself standing before the castle, its many-tiered expanse stretching far over his head. Getting in would not be easy, he saw; it was surrounded by a high wall, and sentries stood guard at the nearest gate. He was under no illusion that these men would let him through, and he had no intention of giving them cause to bring their ceremonial naginata into play. There had to be a way around this obstacle, but what?

Then he saw it—a crooked sakura tree which leaned over the wall, far enough away from this gate that the guards would not have a clear view of what was going on behind it.

He made his way over to the tree, moving as silently and unobtrusively as he could manage so as not to draw any unwanted attention to himself. Once he was safely hidden from view, Tetsuo took a deep breath, rubbed his hands together, and began to climb. There was a particularly thick, low-hanging branch, one that looked just sturdy enough to take his weight and which just cleared the top of the wall. He shimmied along it, moving slowly so as not to make any noise, and dropped down once he was on the other side.

He landed with a grunt, taking in his surroundings at a glance. He stood in what seemed to be a garden of some sort, full of neatly-trimmed shrubs and bonsai trees arranged in rows. Fortunately he hadn't landed in any of these plants; he was sure the noise would have brought sentries running from across the grounds.

Tetsuo started to walk off, wincing as he did so. His legs were stinging something fierce; that landing couldn't have done them any favours.

_Still, at least I'm inside. Now to find out where he went…_

A light from a nearby window drew his attention, a window just low enough for him to see through if he stood on the very tips of his toes. Deciding that was as good a place to start looking as any, he made his way over, stood to his full height and peered inside.

* * *

"We are most pleased that you decided to accept our request, Shinigami-taichou."

"I assure you," said Sar'khon, "the pleasure is mine, Lady Mikado."

The Captain of the Third Company was no stranger to kneeling while clad in his power armour; it was a necessity of being a Space Marine that he be prepared to kneel in prayer to the Emperor and the Primarch, whether attired for battle or not.

That said, he could safely say this was the first time he'd been required to kneel in such peculiar circumstances.

He knelt before a small table, on which sat a variety of porcelain cups and bowls covered with elaborate designs of swirling clouds and fierce creatures. A servant stood at hand, pouring tea into these bowls with the utmost care and reverence; obviously this was something of great cultural significance to the people of this world.

Across from him sat his host, the Lady Mikado. The daimyo of Murosaki prefecture was not an unattractive woman, though he was no expert in such things. Pale-skinned and slender, she did not drape herself in excessive finery despite her position; A simple red kimono adorned with a stylized version of the Imperial aquila was the full extent of her attire, a simple diadem serving as the only clear indicator of her status. The noblewoman's dark hair fell nearly to her waist, framing her narrow face on either side with cheek-length locks cut as straight and level as a razor's edge, while a similarly straight-edged fringe ran across her forehead.

They sat atop a raised dais at one end of a long, rectangular dining hall. Select members of her court were scattered about the chamber, eating heartily at low tables which barely cleared the floor in his eyes. Great tapestries of silk and other materials hung from the walls, depicting scenes from the planet's myths and legends—mighty heroes doing battle with fantastical beasts; vast serpentine creatures with avian talons and feline whiskers, breathing fire, smoke and clouds of rain as they slithered through the air; and people prostrating themselves before a majestic giant in golden armour, a noble and heroic being who carried a flaming sword in one hand and whose features were framed in a halo of light.

Sar'khon felt a stirring of warmth in his hearts as he looked upon this last image. Though he had lain eyes on far grander depictions of the Emperor than this in his time, the tapestry's quality in comparison to such things did not diminish the sense of awe and pride that filled him whenever he was fortunate enough to gaze upon the likeness of the Master of Mankind.

Noticing the direction of his gaze, the Lady Mikado smiled. "We trust this depiction of the Celestial King is to your liking?"

The Captain tore his gaze away from the tapestry and nodded. "It is," he admitted.

"That tapestry was woven generations ago by the ancestors of House Mikado," she explained. "It was made in commemoration of the day the Celestial King descended from the heavens and trod upon the surface of the land, accompanied by his sons the Shinigami."

The servant stepped away, having finished his duties. Lady Mikado wrapped her hands around the steaming bowl of tea with quiet dignity and grace and held it up, but did not drink from it. "Let us offer you a toast for your victory, Shinigami-taichou."

Seeing that the servant had likewise finished filling his own cup, Sar'khon reached up, disengaged the hermetic seals of his gorget with practised ease, and removed his helmet with a hiss of escaping air.

He had to give the daimyo credit; if she was at all perturbed by the sight of his onyx skin and glowing red eyes, she hid it extremely well. The Salamander plucked his cup from the table, holding it gingerly between his thumb and index finger; designed for hands far smaller than his own, it looked rather small and fragile in his grasp.

"To victory," he said, gently touching his cup to her bowl. And with that, they both drank; the Lady Mikado took her time with her own tea, savouring the taste, while Sar'khon downed the entire cup in a single sip.

* * *

Tetsuo's eyes widened as the Space Marine took off that crested helmet, revealing his face to the daimyo. Whatever the boy had been expecting to be under there, a face whose skin was as black as coal and whose eyes blazed like hot embers was perhaps the last thing he might have expected. Scars covered it in a complex network, and three golden studs as thick as coins were lodged in the skin above its right brow. It was a fearsome and dreadful thing, the face of something from the darkest depths of hell.

And yet…despite its inhuman qualities, there was a gentleness to the giant's features, a friendly and almost paternal expression on his face. The Lady Mikado looked absurdly tiny next to the emerald warrior, and Tetsuo felt sure that if this man wanted to take her life, nothing would be able to stop him. But at the same time, somehow he got the feeling that such an act was the furthest thing from what might have been on the Space Marine's mind.

It was a man's face, a human face, exaggerated and altered though it may have been, and it expressed human emotions.

"Were they like us, once…?" he wondered aloud.

Could he become like one of them?

"Hey, you! What do you think you're doing out here?"

The boy's train of thought came to a screeching halt at the sound of that angry voice. He glanced over his shoulder, and felt a sinking feeling lodge itself in the pit of his stomach; one of the palace guards was striding towards him, looking rather mad.

He turned to run—and ran straight into the form of a second guard, falling flat on his ass. Tetsuo grunted as he hit the ground, and before he could flee the guard grabbed his arm, forced it behind his back, and hauled him to his feet.

"Snooping on the daimyo, are we?" the guard said without any humour. "We'll see what she has to say about this…"

* * *

A frown came over Sar'khon's face, and he tilted his head to one side.

"Shinigami-taichou?" The daimyo sounded confused. "Is something amiss?"

The Captain did not answer, using his Lyman's Ear to filter out and enhance an errant sound he'd heard a moment ago from amidst the ambient noise and chatter of the feast. Footsteps, and drawing close at a brisk pace.

"Someone approaches," he said at length.

The words had scarcely left his mouth when the doors at the far end of the dining hall were flung wide. Almost immediately the courtiers' sundry conversations died down, the nobles turning to watch in confusion and indignation as a pair of guards strode into the chamber, dragging a battered young man dressed in the padded uniform of the Murosaki militia between them.

Lady Mikado rose to her feet, her expression one of stern anger. "What is the meaning of this?" she demanded.

The two guards came to a halt a respectful distance from the dais and bowed, forcing their captive down with them. "Forgive this intrusion, Mikado-dono," said one of the sentries. "We caught this man lurking outside, spying on the banquet through that window."

"I wasn't spying!" the boy protested.

The second guard struck him across the face. "Be silent!"

"He was carrying this," the first guard added, holding up a combat knife.

The boy glowered at his captors through a black eye. "That's standard issue."

"I said be quiet, boy!" the second guard snapped.

"What would you have us do with this assassin, milady?" the first one asked.

The daimyo opened her mouth to speak, but before she could utter a single syllable Sar'khon held up his hand. "Lady Mikado, if I may? I do not believe this boy is an assassin."

She glanced at him askance, her expression inscrutable. "You have another idea for why he is here?"

He nodded and stood up. "Young man," he called, stepping down from the dais. "Lift your head, so that I can see your face."

The boy did as he instructed, and sure enough Sar'khon recognized the face immediately, even with the bruising and the black eye the guards' rough treatment had left him with. It was the marksman from atop the parapets.

The Salamander turned to face the daimyo. Even with the extra height the dais afforded her, the two of them were at eye level. "I know this man, milady. He saved my life, and that of one of my subordinates. I would ask that you pardon him for this trespass."

There was no concealing Lady Mikado's surprise. "He saved your life?"

"Indeed. If not for his quick action and keen eye, I would not be standing here before you now."

The noblewoman mulled this over for several seconds. "Very well," she said at length. "Guards, release him."

They did so, albeit reluctantly. The boy rose to his feet and dusted himself off, shooting his former captors a pair of ugly looks.

"What is your name, son?" Sar'khon asked.

The battered youth froze for a moment, as though taken aback at being addressed by the Space Marine. Then he swallowed his fear, met the Captain's gaze, and answered. "T…Tetsuo, sir. My name is Osamu Tetsuo."

Sar'khon nodded. "I am Captain Sar'khon Voltaire, of the Salamanders Third Company. I owe you a debt, Tetsuo." He leaned forward, placing a hand on the boy's shoulder. "But before I can repay that debt, I must ask you something. Why are you here?"

"I…I had to come, Sarrukan-sama," said Tetsuo. "I needed to see you, because I wanted to ask something of you."

"And what is that?" Sar'khon asked with a frown.

A determined look came over the boy's face. Without a word he removed the Captain's hand from his shoulder, and prostrated himself before him.

"Please," he said desperately. "Make me a Space Marine!"

* * *

**Author's Note:** And so Tetsuo pops the question. I'm sure many of you saw this coming a long way off; but how will the captain respond to this bold request? Will his answer be 'No', or 'Hell no'? Tune in next week to find out in the next installment of Outlander!


	4. Deliberations

**Deliberations**

A profound silence settled over the dining hall in the wake of Tetsuo's bold request, a silence so deep that a pin being dropped would have seemed as loud as the detonation of an atomic bomb. The boy held his breath, feeling the eyes of the courtiers upon him like an oppressive weight; their disbelief was an almost palpable thing, and in the corners of his vision he could see sneers starting to form on the faces of a few.

Then Sar'khon's expression hardened. "Out of the question."

Tetsuo flinched; the Space Marine's blunt refusal was like a punch to the gut. He tried to speak, a million questions at the tip of a tongue that suddenly felt swollen and heavy. When he finally found his voice, it was ragged with disbelief. "But…why?"

"You do not know our ways," the Captain stated simply. "And you are too old to begin the training."

"Too old?" An indignant expression took shape on the boy's swollen face. "I'm only fifteen—"

"On Nocturne, children who wish to join the ranks of the Salamanders begin their training at the age of six standard years." The man's words were as cool as the blade of a sword, and just as sharp, cutting off any further protest. "They begin undergoing the therapies and treatments that will turn them from ordinary humans into Space Marines at ten standard years, and this process continues until they are on the cusp of adulthood. You are too old to receive most of the implants; in all likelihood, your body would not survive the procedure."

Sar'khon inclined his head, his expression inscrutable. "Even if this were not the case," he continued, "even if you were not too old, I could not grant your request. The Salamanders recruit only from Nocturne, our home world…and you, Osamu Tetsuo, are a child of Seiryuu." He shook his head once, slowly and solemnly. "You cannot become a Space Marine."

Dull murmurings began to build throughout the chamber as the nobles of Murosaki's court traded whispers. Even though he could not make out their words he could hear their stifled laughter, feel their scorn and their mockery. Tetsuo's face burned with humiliation, his hands curling into angry fists. "But…but I saved your life," he said, his voice growing more heated with every word. "You owe me a debt; you said that just now!"

Those glowing eyes narrowed. "I am well aware of what I said, young man." His tone softened then. "You speak the truth, and I fully intend to repay my debt. But I cannot do it in the manner you ask. Ask anything else of me, but do not ask me to make you a Space Marine."

Tetsuo shook his head. "That's the only thing I want, Sarrukon-sama."

The Shinigami said nothing for a moment, then blew out a long breath through his nostrils. "Then it would seem there is nothing left to say." Sar'khon planted a foot atop the dais, one of those massive pauldrons lowering as he glanced over his shoulder at the boy. "My intervention has spared you any punishment for what has transpired here this evening; let that settle our debt. I suggest you go home, Osamu Tetsuo, before you embarrass yourself further."

With those words the Captain turned away, rising easily onto the dais and moving towards the table to take his seat once more.

"I don't have a home…"

The Space Marine halted, turning slowly to look at Tetsuo once more. "What was that?"

"I don't have a home," the boy repeated. "The Oni…or the orks, or whatever you call those monsters…they destroyed it." His gaze was fixed firmly on the floor, his eyes glistening with unshed tears. "I come from Takuoka, a small village just a few hours' ride from here. The Oni burned it to the ground a week ago, when their attacks first started. They took everything from me, Sarrukon-sama: my family, my friends, my home…everything I've ever owned, everything and everyone I've ever loved…gone. I have nothing left in this world. _Nothing._"

Sar'khon's brow furrowed. "I am sorry for your loss, but why are you telling me this? If you seek to curry my pity…"

The boy's head swung up, his one good eye blazing with fury. "I don't want your pity," Tetsuo hissed. Tears ran freely down his battered face, but despite this his tone remained firm. "What I want is a chance to keep what happened to me from happening to other people, to stop monsters like these Oni from ruining others' lives the way they ruined mine. I want to do what you do, Captain; I want to protect the innocent, and I want to bring vengeance for the fallen! And if I can't do it your way, then I'll find other ways to help people in need; but damn it all, this is what I want to do!"

He paused, taking a shuddering breath. "You're right, I don't know your ways. I don't come from Nocturne; I was born and raised here. But I'm a quick study, Captain, and I'm willing to learn…if you're willing to give me that chance."

The Salamander studied Tetsuo for a long moment, his face a stoic mask and his thoughts unreadable behind those molten eyes. Tetsuo held his gaze, unwilling to back down, trembling from his impassioned speech.

When Sar'khon finally spoke, it was not to the boy. "Lady Mikado?"

"Yes, Sarrukan-taichou?"she asked.

"Would you be so kind as to provide lodgings for this young man, if only for the next few days? There are things I need to consider, before I decide his fate."

A sliver of hope wormed its way into Tetsuo's heart at these words.

The daimyo's face was a study in bafflement and indignation. "Captain, we are grateful for your timely intervention this day," she said in a rush. "And we were perfectly willing to pardon this young man for eavesdropping. But now he has gone on to disrupt the banquet with his impetuous request, make a fool out of himself in front of the entire court and sully the peaceful atmosphere with his tales of woe…and you would have us take him in?" She shook her head. "With respect, Captain, we feel you ask too much of us this time."

"You need not hold him forever," he said reassuringly. "This would only be a temporary arrangement; once I have come to a decision, I shall take him off your hands." Sar'khon turned to face her fully, and then—to the collective astonishment of everyone in the room—he dropped to one knee. "Please, Lady Mikado."

The Lady Mikado pressed her lips into a thin line as she looked down at the Space Marine, deliberating on his request. Murmurs and whispers filled the air, the courtiers gossiping amongst one another like bees in a hive sharing information. Tetsuo could not make out precisely what they were saying, but he caught the gist of it; to see a Shinigami, and one of their Captains at that, abase himself before a mere mortal was utterly unheard of. How would history look upon the daimyo if she were to refuse such a humble request?

There was only one possible answer—and thus only one possible course of action she could take.

With a weary sigh, the Lady Mikado glanced at the two sentries still standing over Tetsuo. "Escort our young _friend_ to the guest rooms," she instructed coldly, placing particular emphasis on that word. "Make sure he gets himself properly settled in."

The guards saluted, and without any further ado they grabbed the boy by his shoulders and hauled him to his feet. Tetsuo shook himself free of their grasp, then clapped his hands together and bowed deeply at the waist. "A thousand thanks for your hospitality, Mikado-dono. And a thousand thanks to you as well, Sarrukan-sama."

"Do not thank me yet," the Captain cautioned sternly. "I have not yet reached a decision."

Seeing that there was nothing more to be said, the daimyo made a subtle gesture with her hand. The sentries took hold of his arms, turned him around with perhaps a little more force than was necessary, and marched him out of the room.

* * *

A day had passed since the Salamanders' victory over the orks outside the walls of Murosaki; in that time the squads of the Third Company had successfully rooted out and exterminated every last trace of the greenskins under the Veteran Sergeant's guidance, and the Company Apothecary had taken the chapter's due from the fallen, their progenoid glands safely secured within vacuum-sealed canisters in the strike cruiser's apothecarion. The storm had lifted some hours previously, and bereft of this hazard Techmarine Kraft had wasted no time in dispatching Thunderhawks to retrieve Brother Amadi and those still on the surface.

With all Space Marines safely aboard the striker cruiser and the situation dealt with decisively, there was nothing to keep the Salamanders' Third Company here. By all rights the _Promethean Anvil_ should have long since fired her engines, energized her Gellar fields and set course for home, leaving Seiryuu behind.

But it did not. Instead the _Anvil_ lingered in geosynchronous orbit above Murosaki prefecture, her departure put on hold for reasons undisclosed to the majority of the Space Marines she carried and the loyal chapter-serfs which crewed her.

Out of the thousands of souls aboard the strike cruiser, only five knew the cause of this delay; those five found themselves standing around a tactical map table in a private planning chamber. The inert hololith display shone with a dull orange glow, painting the ceramite armour of these figures in an array of ruddy hues.

It was N'Mani who spoke first, a stern expression on his face. ""Captain, I know that look. Please tell me you aren't giving that boy's request serious consideration."

"And if I am, old friend?" Sar'khon kept his tone even. He had anticipated resistance, and he did not wish this to get out of hand.

"It cannot be done. You told him as much, by your own admission." The Veteran Sergeant brought up a hand and began counting off on his fingers. "He is too old to receive most of the implants; he is far too old to begin a proper apprenticeship and undergo the trials, as any proper aspirant must; he knows nothing of the Promethean cult; and he is not a son of Nocturne."

The Captain nodded. "Valid concerns," he conceded, before glancing at the Company Apothecary. "Even so, is it not possible that he _could_ undergo the treatments and survive? Theoretically, at least?"

"In theory, Captain." The Apothecary tilted his head to one side, his hairless brows furrowing in concentration. "There would be a far greater risk of his body rejecting the first-wave implants, so he would be in considerable danger…but in theory, it could be done."

"But in practice, it never will," Chaplain Gore cut in. Unlike most of those standing around the table, he still wore his helmet, his face concealed behind its silver skull mask; even so, his anger was all too clear. "The Salamanders do not recruit from any planet other than our home world. No First Founding chapter does!"

"Is that so?" said Epistolary Tigris. "Then I have been greatly misinformed about the recruiting practices of some chapters. The Imperial Fists and the Dark Angels come to mind…"

The Chaplain shot the Librarian an acidic look. "They are fleet-based chapters, are they not? The sons of Dorn and the Lion recruit from multiple worlds because they have no home world."

"And what of the Ultramarines, then? Do they not draw recruits from planets across their territory, Ultramar?"

"The ways of Guilliman's sons are not the ways of Vulkan's," Gore snapped. "They have their traditions, and we have ours. And on this subject, they are clear: the Salamanders recruit only from Nocturne. Such is the way it has always been, since the dark days of the Great Betrayal." The Chaplain turned to regard Sar'khon then, his eyes narrowed. "And such is the way it always shall be. We cannot simply set aside these traditions whenever it is convenient, Captain; we'd be no better than the Traitor Legions if we did."

The Captain inclined his head, his own eyes narrowing in turn. "I do not appreciate your likening me to one of those mongrel renegades, Gore; I sought your counsel, not your reprobation." He leaned forward, placing his hands on the table's surface. "I am not suggesting that we abandon our traditions and conduct ourselves however the whim strikes us. What I suggest is that we take this boy and give him the chance to learn our traditions."

He paused, and let out a breath. "Yes, the boy is ignorant of our ways," he admitted, "but he has potential. You saw how he killed that gretchin, old friend," he said to N'Mani. "He made that shot from hundreds of feet away, on a small moving target, using a lasgun with no scope. And that was with his baseline, unaltered human visual acuity; imagine what he might do with the eyes of a Space Marine and a proper sniper rifle."

The veteran scowled. "It does make for an intriguing thought…"

"But would he survive the treatments and the gene-therapy?" the Apothecary interjected. "I don't need to remind you just how strenuous these procedures are; it is entirely possible that he will die, and his potential would go unrealized."

"True," said Tigris. "But that is a risk that _all_ aspirants take. He is hardly unique in that regard, his less-than-optimal chances of survival notwithstanding."

Gore swept his gaze across the assembled Salamanders. "And what of the trials, then?" he asked after a long moment. "You know, as well as I do, that all who would walk the path of the Salamander must first follow in the Primarch's footsteps. It is a path that takes years to complete, and those who would walk it must set out at a much younger age than this. All else aside, Captain, how would you deal with this obstacle?"

A smile tugged at the corner of Sar'khon's mouth. "For that, Gore, we'll simply have to improvise."

The Chaplain panned his head back and forth, taking in his fellow Space Marines; then he let out a sigh of weary resignation. "You are serious about this, aren't you? You intend to go through with this." It was a statement, not a question.

A nod was the full extent of the Captain's response.

"And nothing I can say will change your mind."

Again, Sar'khon nodded.

"Very well, then," Gore sighed. "I shall assist you with this…endeavour. But Captain," he warned, "the Chapter Master will not be pleased when he hears of this. Nor will the Master of Chaplains, I'd imagine."

"Of that," said Tigris, "we can be certain."

The Apothecary and the Veteran Sergeant nodded in agreement.

Sar'khon frowned. "I've no doubt…but that is a risk I'm willing to take. Nothing ventured, nothing gained…"

* * *

The guards had escorted him to one of the palace's smaller, more modest guest rooms, which meant it was still more lavish and ostentatious than any house in Takuoka; misty mountains and floral patterns adorned the walls in a continuous, unbroken pattern, creating the illusion that he'd stepped into an ukiyo-e woodcut painting. The floor chimed softly underfoot, every step he took filling the air with notes of soothing music. A broad futon lay tucked into a corner, its sheets and mattress far softer and more comfortable than any he'd ever slept in, its fabric the same shade of red as the Lady Mikado's kimono; to say that it had been a welcome change from the muddy trenches he'd been stuck in for the last week would have been an understatement.

The back wall, he'd learned, could be slid aside to reveal a private furo; and upon discovering it, the young man had wasted no time in stripping out of his filthy militia uniform, scrubbing himself clean of all the grime and letting himself soak in the tub for a good long while. He'd emerged several hours later, feeling refreshed, and drying himself off he'd made his way over to that futon and fallen asleep almost immediately.

How much time had passed by the time he'd woken up, he couldn't say; and at first, he had not cared. At that moment he'd been content to let himself enjoy the amenities and relax for a little while. It was not until he went to the door, having been overcome by the sudden desire to stretch his legs with a walk, and discovered a pair of armed sentries standing guard on the other side of it, that he realized he may have been in trouble.

The very instant he had tried to put a single foot outside the chamber, the guards crossed their spears and blocked his path. "By order of the Lady Mikado, you have been placed under house arrest," one of the guards had told him curtly. "You are not to leave this room until such time as your fate has been decided."

He'd stared at them incredulously. "Well, what am I supposed to do for food?"

"You will receive meals at regular intervals; bread and water, nothing more."

"Be glad she didn't order us to throw you in the dungeons," the other guard had sneered. "We've had plenty of prisoners who'd kill to be in your shoes, kid."

And without another word they had forced him back into the room, sliding the door shut with a note of finality.

That had been quite some time ago. Now he sat cross-legged in the middle of the room, dressed in a simple yukata that he'd found in the bathroom. The blue kimono was a little too big for his frame, and something about the fabric made it chafe; but he did his best to ignore his discomfort, and tried not to think about what might happen to him if the Captain's decision ultimately turned out to be a refusal.

Instead he found his mind awash with images of familiar faces, people he had known all his life. They danced before his eyes, insubstantial as wisps of smoke, morphing from one visage to the next without rhyme or reason. His mother, smiling warmly; his father, brows furrowed and jaw set in stern approval; Taro, laughing and full of life; old Tozawa, looking grumpy as ever…all these and more swam through the air in front of him, their mouths moving softly, filling his ears with their whispers. _Tetsuo… Tetsuo… Why did you survive when we didn't?_

A dull ache welled up in his breast. "I'm sorry," he whispered, lowering his head in shame. "I couldn't save you…"

The apparitions fell silent, crowding around him. It almost seemed like they were waiting for something. He did not meet their collective gaze; he had no right to look them in the eye.

"I tried to warn you all," he continued quietly. "Really, I did. But I wasn't fast enough. By the time I reached the village, the Oni were already there." Tetsuo paused, and when next he spoke it was with greater volume. "I had to run; you can understand that, can't you? I had to make sure the warning got out, so that other villages wouldn't suffer the same fate as Takuoka."

The dead said nothing. They did not have to; their silence spoke volumes.

The boy let out a sombre sigh. "I guess that doesn't matter to you, does it?" A humourless chuckle left his lips. "It doesn't change the fact that you're all dead, and I'm not."

A long moment passed.

"I couldn't save you," he said softly, "and I can't bring you back. No one has that kind of power." He looked up, a determined expression slowly taking shape on his face. "But I promise you all, I'll do whatever I can to make sure something like this never happens again. No one else will suffer this way, not if I can help it."

His gaze settled on the spectres of his mother and father. "I'll make you proud," he swore. "I will restore our honour. I _will_ become a Space Marine… or die trying."

These words seemed to satisfy the ghosts, for his parents nodded in approval; and without a sound they faded away, like wisps of fog blown apart by a gentle breeze.

The floor let out a soft chime.

Tetsuo looked down, confused. He hadn't moved, and there was no one else in the room. So what had made the sound?

The tatami chimed again, and a moment later they did it again. And that was when he felt it: vibrations were running through the floor into his body in time to the musical notes, coming in regular intervals and getting stronger every time it happened.

The boy's brow furrowed. Were those…footsteps?

The vibrations continued for half a minute, then stopped abruptly. Tetsuo heard faint sounds of a conversation coming from outside his room, but he could not make anything out through the thin walls. Then the door slid open to reveal one of the guards, a serious look on his face. "It's time," he said.

Rising to his feet, Tetsuo cautiously strode out of the room. The first thing he noticed as the sentry stepped aside and let him through was the second guard, the one who had taunted him before. The man was looking at something off to the left, his mouth hanging open and his face pale like he had just seen something terrible; his spear was tucked into the crook of one arm, and he had his hands crossed over his chest in the sign of the Celestial King's sacred two-headed eagle.

Tetsuo followed the man's gaze, and what he saw made his eyes go wide as he let out a gasp.

Not ten feet away stood the towering form of a Shinigami. All Space Marines deserved that title, but it fit this warrior particularly well; unlike the emerald warriors who had taken to the field yesterday, this giant's armour was black as pitch and adorned with foreboding symbols of skulls, snarling dragons and raging flames. His helmet was bone-white and looked even more like a human skull than those of the other Space Marines Tetsuo had seen, complete with clenched teeth and gaping nasal cavities, and his entire left shoulder pad was similarly wrought in the form of an oversized death's head. He held a short rod in one hand, a rod whose head was wrought in the shape of the sacred eagle; an amulet depicting the same hung from his neck on a lanyard, resting atop a winged skull worked into his breastplate.

"Who…who are you?" the boy stammered.

The black Shinigami turned the yawning black pits of that skull-helmet on him. "I am Chaplain Gore of the Salamanders," he said, his words a deep and reverberating bass that sent shivers running down Tetsuo's spine. "Do you fear me, boy?"

Tetsuo's mouth worked silently for a moment. He wanted to say no, that he did not fear this imposing and sinister warrior; but that would have been a lie. "Y…yes," he admitted. "I do."

The Chaplain inclined his head. "You are honest. Good." His tone became harsh then. "But a Space Marine must know no fear, for he is the Emperor's fury made manifest."

Gore took a single step towards the boy, and Tetsuo wanted nothing more than to back away; but he stood his ground, refusing to let his fear master him. He could see that he was being tested, and he would not be found wanting if he had to say anything about it.

The Chaplain scrutinized him for a long moment, the black pits of his helmet boring into the boy. At length he nodded, as if satisfied, and began to speak. "Osamu Tetsuo, do you stand by your desire to become a Space Marine?"

"I…I do, Gore-sama," he said.

"You will address me as 'Chaplain', boy," Gore said curtly. "Nothing more than that, and nothing less. Your honorifics have no place here."

Tetsuo flinched at this rebuke, but nodded. "As you wish…Chaplain." He had to force the title out, and it tasted like ash in his mouth; the idea of not using the proper honorifics to refer to this man struck the boy as horrifically disrespectful, and he could see from the looks on their faces that his jailers were also taken aback. But Chaplain Gore himself had requested it; what else could Tetsuo do but obey?

Oblivious to the boy's thoughts, the Space Marine went on. "Are you sincere in your desire to protect the weak? Are you willing to put your life on the line and stand against the very worst horrors this universe can pit against mankind?"

Tetsuo nodded. "I am."

"To be a Space Marine is to be apart from the common man," Gore cautioned. "It is to become greater in many respects, but in others reduced. Are you willing to forsake any chance at a normal life, any chance of remaining a normal human being, in order to do this?"

Tetsuo hesitated, but only for a moment. "I am."

The Chaplain let out a low, rumbling sound that might have been a grunt or a hum. "There is a very real chance that you will not survive the procedures that will transform you from an ordinary man into one of our kind," he said at length. "Due to your age, you could very well die on the operating table should your body reject the necessary implants." He leaned forward, looming over Tetsuo. "Are you willing to take that risk?"

The boy swallowed a sudden lump which had formed in his throat, and did not answer. The Chaplain's words had put a very vivid and gruesome image into his head, an image of himself lying on a table with his chest cut open from gullet to gizzard, leaving his innards on display and an expression of horrendous torment on his lifeless face.

"Are you willing to take that risk?" Gore repeated.

Finally Tetsuo found his voice, though it was weaker than it had been a moment ago. "I…I am, Chaplain."

The Chaplain made that sound once again, his skepticism all too clear. "Space Marines do not die of old age; we only fall on the battlefield, when our injuries are so great that we can fight no more. If you join our ranks, your death will not be a peaceful one; and given the punishment we can endure, it is quite likely that when you inevitably die your end will come in a slow and horrible fashion."

He leaned forward, dropping to one knee so that he was almost—but not quite—at eye-level with the boy. "Are you still willing to go through with this, knowing that your demise will almost certainly be agonizing and horrific?"

There was such certainty in the Chaplain's words that Tetsuo knew he wasn't exaggerating in the slightest. Swallowing another lump, he nodded. "I am. I'm willing to take that risk."

Gore's empty sockets bored into him for a long moment, his thoughts inscrutable behind that skull helmet. Tetsuo held the Space Marine's gaze, though it took a supreme effort of will, and beads of sweat ran freely down his face.

"If you go through with this," the Chaplain said softly, "then it is all but certain that you will never return to this planet. Are you willing to turn your back on your people, on the world of your birth, and dedicate yourself body and soul to service of the Emperor and the protection of His subjects? Are you willing to put aside the values you have been taught from birth, and submit yourself to the teachings of our Promethean cult?"

Several seconds passed in silence. Then the boy let out a dry chuckle.

"These questions are no laughing matter, child."

"I know," Tetsuo said. "It's just…after all the ones you asked me just now, that one's not hard to answer." He spread his arms wide. "There is nothing left for me here, Chaplain. All that I've ever had, every person I've ever known and loved…the greenskins took it from me. What could I possibly do with myself if I were to stay? Roam the countryside? Live like a beggar?" The boy shook his head. "That's not for me. So yes, I am willing to do these things. 'It is better to die for the Celestial King than to live for yourself'. My parents taught me that."

Gore said nothing, but nodded in approval. The Chaplain rose to his feet and took a few steps back, looking down at Tetsuo. "So be it, then," he said. "In light of your words, Osamu Tetsuo, your request is granted. You shall be given the chance to become a Space Marine, though you will likely perish along the way. Come, aspirant; there is much to be done."

And without another word the Shinigami turned smartly on his heel and began to walk away, his great stride letting him cover quite a considerable distance despite his unhurried pace. Tetsuo stood transfixed for a moment, scarcely able to believe this was happening; then he shook himself out of the trance, a smile forming on his face, and hurried after Gore.

"Thank you for this chance, Chaplain," he said once he'd caught up, panting softly from the effort of keeping pace with the Space Marine.

That death's head pauldron lowered with a whine, letting the Chaplain glance at Tetsuo over his shoulder. "Don't thank me, boy," he warned. "You may come to regret your decision. Tomorrow your training begins…"

* * *

**Author's Note:** Not a lot of action this chapter, I know. Chapter five will be much the same in that regard...but chapter six will more than make up for it.

And so Tetsuo's bold request has been granted. But the path ahead will not be easy to walk; will his efforts meet with success? Or will he know only failure? Tune in next week as Tetsuo takes his first steps into a larger world, and begins to understand his place in the grim darkness of the far future.


	5. Relocation

**Relocation**

Gore set a tireless pace, leading Tetsuo out of the palace and through the streets of Murosaki. Citizens who had been going about their day in good cheer all stopped what they were doing as the Chaplain passed, the foreboding presence of the black-armoured, skull-faced giant impossible to ignore. People stood and gawked, moving only to get out of his way if they were unfortunate enough to be in his path, so transfixed by the Shinigami's threatening appearance that they could not find their voices until long after he was gone; only then, when he was out of sight, did they allow themselves to whisper amongst one another of the terrifying figure…and of the young boy trotting along in his wake, struggling to keep up.

Tetsuo paid them no heed, his gaze firmly locked on the Chaplain's cumbersome backpack as he focused on putting one foot in front of the other. He was only a few metres behind the Space Marine, but closing the distance was almost impossible; Gore may not have been moving at anything faster than a brisk walk, but his legs were far longer than Tetsuo's and every step he took covered as much distance as three of the boy's own. His breath came and went in short gasps, and he could feel a sheen of sweat beginning to form on his brow.

At length they came to the main entrance of the city walls, where the front gates had been opened wide to reveal the muddy battlefield that lay beyond. Something else was there as well, and Tetsuo found his eyes widening in awe at the sight of it.

Several dozen metres from the walls was an immense, angular thing, a metal bird of sharp lines and straight-edged wings. It rested on three squatting legs, two that extended from the rear and one jutting from beneath the bulbous front section like the dewlap of a gargantuan phoenix. Oblong pods were slung beneath the largest of its six wings, their points sharp and their purpose unknowable, and a great tube that seemed like the biggest cannon he'd ever seen ran along its spine from a hump towards the iron bird's rear. Boxy pods hung on either side of the machine's upward-sloping front, facing forward, bearing what were unmistakably guns like the amazing weapons the Shinigami had unleashed upon the Oni days before.

"What _is_ that?" he asked, unable to keep the awe from his voice.

Gore did not stop as he answered. "A Thunderhawk gunship. It is in mighty aircraft such as these that the Space Marines are borne into battle. But we do not go to war this day."

The Chaplain strode towards the vehicle, coming to a halt alongside the rearmost part of its head-like fore section. Tetsuo joined him a few seconds later, breathing heavily, and saw that there was an octagonal piece of the hull slightly wider than Gore's broad frame. Suddenly there came a hiss from the ship, and the boy drew back a pace as this panel sank into the Thunderhawk's surface and slid upward out of sight; belatedly he realized that it was a door. Inside was nothing but a sombre, red-tinged gloom too dark for his eyes to penetrate.

"I can't see in there, Chaplain," he said, though it pained him to admit it.

"Your eyes will adjust to the darkness," Gore replied without warmth. "Now come; we must not delay."

And without another word he picked Tetsuo up, lifting him off the ground as easily as a man might lift up a pillow, and placed him within the boarding hatch. "Step further into the ship," he warned. "Otherwise, I will step on you."

The boy did as he instructed without hesitation, and as soon as the way was clear Gore grasped the doorframe with one hand and pulled himself up. Framed in the doorway, the Chaplain's silhouette was like an omen of impending doom, a shadow in the shape of a man—or something akin to it—cut from the light of day.

Then the door slid back down, and the inside of the Thunderhawk was plunged into darkness.

Tetsuo could see nothing, but fortunately he did not have to; in seconds he felt the Space Marine's armoured hands on his shoulders, and then he found himself backpedaling as Gore steered him towards the far side. Mere moments later his back collided with a cold hard surface, and then there came a soft hissing from somewhere just over his head on either side as the Chaplain released him.

True to Gore's words, his vision _was_ starting to adapt to the gloom; instead of just blackness, he could now make out vague suggestions of shapes and movement—and this was enough to let him see something flip down in front of him from somewhere overhead. Chevron-shaped and wider than he was, it pressed itself against his chest to form a V, pressing him against the wall.

"These restraints will keep you safe during our trip," Gore explained, his dark silhouette moving to stand to the left of the boy before turning around and backing up. As he did this, Tetsuo heard another hiss, and he could make out a similar object swinging down to lock the Chaplain in place. Once he was safely secured, Gore spoke, his words addressed seemingly to the gloom. "Pilot, this is Chaplain Gore; inform the Captain that our cargo is secure."

"Aye, Chaplain," said another voice, coming from somewhere overhead. "Beginning pre-flight checks now..."

Confused, Tetsuo squinted into the darkness in that general direction, but he saw nothing. Who was speaking?

Such thoughts were pushed aside as a muffled, throaty rumble from somewhere off to the right reached his ears. A subtle vibration ran through the wall, sending odd tingles up his spine, and at the same time he notice a soft, high-pitched whine slowly building over that rumbling.

"We are preparing for liftoff," Gore said, perhaps sensing the boy's confusion. "I'd advise you to hang on tight. These ships were not designed with human comfort in mind, so things might get a little rough."

Tetsuo was about to ask what he meant by that; but before a single syllable could leave his mouth that throaty rumble suddenly morphed into a throaty roar, and the boy cried out as an invisible force suddenly slammed him to the right, pressing him hard against the restraints as that vibration intensified into a very unpleasant rattling.

Over the roar, the rattling, and the sound of his own teeth chattering like mad, he could just barely make out that second voice. "We are away, Chaplain. Entering the lower reaches of the planet's atmosphere now; estimated time of our return to the _Promethean Anvil_, fifteen minutes."

Somehow, the boy found the strength to grind out a question. "Promethean…Anvil?"

Gore glanced in his direction. "Our strike cruiser," he explained. "The ship that brought us to your world."

"Will you…make me…into a Space Marine…there?"

"No. The _Promethean Anvil_ is not equipped to perform such a procedure; it can only be done within the walls of our fortress-monastery on Prometheus. The _Anvil_ shall take us there."

"How…long?"

"I cannot say." The Chaplain glanced away. "The currents of the Warp are fickle even at the best of times, Osamu Tetsuo. It might take days for us to reach Prometheus, or it might take months." The gaze of that skull-faced helm fell upon Tetsuo again. "However long the voyage ultimately takes, you will spend every day of it in training and preparation starting tomorrow. There is much to be done and much to be taught if you are to join our ranks; most aspirants spend years learning the ways and virtues of our Promethean cult, studying under the watchful eye of a Salamander, before they begin to undergo the procedures that will turn them into Space Marines. _You_ do not have that sort of time, and so you must learn at an accelerated rate."

Tetsuo said nothing, for he had no answer to this. Even if he did, the rising pressure of that invisible force pressing him into his restraints would have made forcing it out all but impossible. Clenching his teeth to stop their chattering, he clenched his eyes tightly shut and did his best to ride out the unpleasant sensations.

Gradually, though, the rattling vibrations running through the wall began to diminish, and with it the awful pressure eased up enough that he could breathe and move around a little. The roar died down as well, fading to a less ear-splitting level, though it took a few moments for his ears to stop ringing. By this time the boy's eyes had adjusted enough that he could make out most of his surroundings through the red-tinted darkness; it was a broad, cavernous space which seemed to run the length of the gunship, with the opposite wall covered in restraints just like the ones he and the Chaplain were currently secured in. Everything was made of metal, the walls adorned with glyphs of two-headed eagles and snarling dragons, and in the corners he could see strange glass bulbs that shone softly with a crimson light.

"Exiting the planet's atmosphere now," that other voice called once more, its source still unseen. "Ten minutes to rendezvous with the strike cruiser, Chaplain."

Tetsuo frowned, looking towards a corner of the ceiling. All he saw there was a strange box covered in a circle of what might have been tiny holes. "Where's that coming from?" he wheezed, his chest still feeling just a little tight.

"From there." Gore pointed to that box. "That is a vox grille; it broadcasts the pilot's words to us from the cockpit, and vice versa."

The boy blinked, eyes widening. "A box that lets you talk with someone that isn't actually in the same room?" he asked. "That's amazing! How does it work?"

"Save such questions for the Techmarines," the Chaplain said. "They could explain its workings better than I." Gore reached out with one arm to grab hold of something above Tetsuo and flipped it down, revealing a strange rectangular panel with a glossy black surface like a piece of glass. "_This_, Osamu Tetsuo, is a pict-slate; it displays images from a variety of different sources. Again, how it works is the domain of the Techmarines; save whatever questions you may have for them." He glanced towards that vox grille. "Pilot, patch in a feed from the aft-mounted picters."

"Aye, Chaplain," the pilot called.

No sooner had the boxy device issued these words than the surface of that pict-slate lit up, and Tetsuo found his eyes widening as an image took shape.

It was a ball, blue and covered with irregular patches of green and brown. Wisps of white dotted its surface, casting faint shadows across the blue and green, some of them turning and moving before his eyes, forming odd shapes and patterns almost like clouds. The image was hazy and flickering, distorted by brief flashes of grey; but even so it was captivating sight that took his breath away.

"Is that…?" He trailed off, too awestruck to complete the sentence.

Gore nodded. "That is Seiryuu, your home planet. It is but one of the million worlds that make up the Imperium of Man, and the Space Marines are sworn to protect them all."

Tetsuo licked his lips, finding them suddenly dry. "It's so beautiful," he breathed. "And yet, it's so small…"

"The galaxy is a vast place, Osamu Tetsuo," the Chaplain said gravely. "It is vaster than most men can fathom, and full of horrors that would love nothing more than to see humanity brought low. It is the solemn duty of the Space Marine to guard the Emperor's domain and His subjects from all such threats: aliens, mutants, heretics…and worse." He paused, and that massive pauldron lowered again as he turned his death's head gaze on the boy once more. "Understand this, child. There can be no bargaining with the enemies of man; they seek only our subjugation or destruction, and so are deserving only of our scorn. You must have no sympathy for those who have turned from the Emperor's light and those who would menace His subjects. Empathy for the enemy breeds doubt, and doubt is a weakness a Space Marine cannot afford. Do you understand?"

The boy shrank a little in his restraints under Gore's baleful gaze. "I…I think so."

"No," the Chaplain said, "you do not. But you will, by the time I am through with you."

On the pict-screen, the cloud-dappled orb of Seiryuu grew smaller and smaller with every passing moment as the Thunderhawk sped away, leaving behind all that Osamu Tetsuo had ever known. He watched his world recede, a feeling of uncertainty worming his way into his heart; perhaps for the first time, he began to wonder just what he was getting himself into. Part of him wanted to go back, to leave this strange place of iron and darkness and return to the comfort of the familiar; but the rest of him was having none of it. He'd made his choice, and he wasn't about to go back on it; and even if he did cave in to that part's desire to go home, it was far too late for that.

For better or for worse, his course was set.

The pilot's voice sounded through the hold once more. "Five minutes to rendezvous with the strike cruiser."

Gore nodded. "Good. Switch the view to one from the fore-mounted picters; let the boy get his first look at the _Promethean Anvil._"

The pilot voiced his acknowledgement, and the pict-slate let out a crackle as the image dissolved into static. A moment later it reformed, displaying an image of a white orb that Tetsuo recognized as Genbu…but it was what was silhouetted against the moon's cratered surface that caught his attention.

The boy's jaw dropped open. "Sacred Throne…" he breathed.

A mountain range of emerald-hued metal hung before Genbu, all but eclipsing the moon behind its majestic bulk. Towering spires and crenellations ran along its length like the battlements of a fortress, gleaming with the reflected light of the sun. Recessed gun ports dotted its flank, housing cannons like those of a sailing ship blown up to monstrous proportions, and even more guns could be seen elsewhere on its surface—on the underside, sprouting from a wing-like projection towards the aft; atop the prow, squatting like a crown or a helmet full of deadly force over that plough-shaped extension; and jutting from the very face of the ship itself, like tusks. It was a majestic thing, a sight that stole the boy's breath, at once terrible and magnificent to behold; in his mind it conjured images of a great and powerful predator, a beast capable of unleashing death in nearly any direction.

He glanced at Gore. "This is the _Promethean Anvil_?"

"Indeed it is," said the Chaplain, a note of pride creeping into his words. "Take a good look at it, Tetsuo; it is in such ships as these that the Space Marines travel the stars. She has room enough for an entire company of Space Marines and all the equipment they need to wage war upon humanity's foes. From bow to stern she measures four kilometres, and the tens of thousands of souls that make up her crew live their entire lives within her depths. A single ship like the _Anvil_ has enough power to bring an entire planet to heel; it is power that is not to be taken lightly."

Tetsuo's eyes widened in awe, his mind boggling as it tried to process that notion. Tens of thousands of people lived and died within that ship, and there was enough space left over for all that? "That's amazing."

"Indeed." Gore fell silent, watching as the strike cruiser grew larger and larger with every passing second, until it dominated the pict-slate. "Welcome to your new home."

* * *

The Thunderhawk set down within one of the _Promethean Anvil's_ starboard embarkation decks. No sooner had it settled onto its landing gear than Gore flipped the pict-slate back into its housing and removed himself from his acceleration couch, before doing the same for Tetsuo. Once that was done and once one of the gunship's side doors had slid open, the Chaplain led his young charge out of the vehicle and across the cavernous space.

A Techmarine approached as they disembarked, a coterie of servitors following along in his wake; Gore nodded respectfully to the battle-brother as he passed, but stopped a moment later when he realized that Tetsuo was not following. Turning, he saw the boy standing rooted to the spot, staring at the slack-jawed amalgamations of flesh and metal in undisguised horror as they began to perform maintenance on the gunship.

Gore frowned at the sight. The Chaplain had not been mortal for many hundreds of years, and at times he found it difficult to read the emotions of baseline humans. Other times, though, their thoughts and feelings were as plain as day, and the naked fear writ clear across the boy's face filled him with disapproval. He supposed that, hailing from a feudal world whose inhabitants had yet to even discover electricity, it was only natural that Tetsuo would find the sight of these lobotomized, cybernetic drones a frightening one. For an ordinary human, unused to the workings and trappings of the wider Imperium, fear was perhaps the appropriate response.

But fear had no place in the hearts of a Space Marine, especially not for something as mundane as this.

Striding towards the boy, Gore placed a hand on Tetsuo's shoulder—and had to suppress a scowl when his charge flinched at his touch. "Come along, Tetsuo; we have work to do."

"Y-yes," the boy stammered, tearing his gaze away from the automata.

Satisfied, Gore turned on his heel and led him from the embarkation deck.

They made their way through the vaulted halls of the strike cruiser, dimly lit by overhead lamps and the dancing flames of electro-candles. Chapter-serfs in hooded robes bowed respectfully as the Chaplain passed, shooting curious looks at the boy following in his wake. Fellow Salamanders going the other way offered Gore nods and brief words of greeting, likewise eyeing the boy with no small amount of scrutiny. Human or Space Marine, the question was writ clear across their features; who was this child, and what was he doing here? The crew and serfs aside, this was no place for a mortal.

Fortunately they kept such questions to themselves, saving Gore the trouble of having to explain the Captain's intentions for the child. The journey passed without incident, and in short order the two found themselves standing before the doors of the ship's apothecarion. They slid open at their approach, a hiss of chilled vapour issuing forth, and without stopping the Chaplain led his charge into the sterile medicae ward.

Epistolary Tigris and the Company Apothecary were waiting for them, both clad in their Mark VII warplate. The battle-brothers turned the lenses of their atypically-coloured helmets upon Tetsuo, who had begun to shiver in the apothecarion's cool air. "This is the boy, then?" asked Tigris.

Gore nodded in silence.

Tetsuo had wrapped his arms around his chest, teeth chattering; obviously the thin robes he wore were ill-suited for such low temperatures. "W-where is the C-captain?"

"Captain Sar'khon is on the bridge, Osamu Tetsuo," said the Apothecary. "He is supervising the final preparations for our departure."

As if to punctuate that statement, the flat, emotionless drone of a servitor issued forth from a wall-mounted speaker. "Main engine start in ten minutes."

A pained expression took shape on the young man's face. "I'd l-like to see him, p-please," he stammered.

"You will see the Captain at _his_ discretion," Gore said reproachfully.

"In the meantime, there are some tests we need to run on you." The Epistolary beckoned to the boy. "Step forward, Osamu Tetsuo."

Still shivering, Tetsuo did as Tigris instructed him, casting curious gazes about the chamber in the process. His eyes ceased their wandering when the Librarian dropped to one knee before him, placing a cobalt-hued hand on the boy's shoulder. The crimson lenses of Tigris' helmet bored into him, but to his credit Tetsuo met the Space Marine's gaze without flinching or being cowed.

His bravado wavered, however, as hoarfrost began to form on his kimono, spreading outwards from the Librarian's palm. "W-what is this?" he asked, his nose wrinkling as a salty tang not unlike the smell that followed a powerful rainstorm flooded his nostrils.

Tigris did not answer, and Gore knew why; the Librarian was using his psychic powers to peer into the boy's mind, telepathically scanning him for anything worthy of note. Such a task required a degree of concentration, or so he imagined, and replying to the boy's question could easily disrupt that focus.

They remained in that position for half a minute, at which point the Epistolary removed his hand from the boy's shoulder and stood, the frost sloughing from his hand and the scent of the Warp fading from the air. "No discernible psionic brain activity," he said, his tone sounding mildly disappointed to the Chaplain's ears. "I would rate him as a Rho or a Pi; baseline human in terms of psychic potential."

"W-what does that mean?" the boy asked uncertainly, shaking the frost from his shoulders.

Tigris glanced at him. "It means you are not a psyker, and that you will never wield the power of the Warp as I do. For that, you should consider yourself fortunate. But I digress," he added, turning his gaze to the Apothecary. "He's all yours, Locke."

Nodding, the white-helmed Salamander stepped forward. "Disrobe, if you please."

"W-what?!" Tetsuo glanced at Locke as if the Apothecary had just asked him to jump into a pool of acid. "B-but it's f-freezing in here!"

"A Space Marine can endure temperatures far lower than this without complaint," Gore said sternly, folding his arms across his chest.

The boy shot him a venomous look. "W-well, I'm not a S-space Marine _yet_, now am I?"

The Chaplain felt a rare smile tug at the corners of his mouth. Tetsuo certainly had spirit, if nothing else.

"This will only be for a minute or two at the very most," Locke said in a conciliatory tone. "And we have something warmer for you to wear once this is done. Now please, disrobe."

Muttering something that Gore did not understand under his breath, Tetsuo complied, stripping down to his undergarments with obvious reluctance. He stood all but naked before the three Space Marines, trembling from the cold and looking distinctly uncomfortable.

The Apothecary circled the boy, humming thoughtfully as he studied the Tetsuo's physical characteristics. Occasionally he would ask the boy to hold out his arms or lift up a leg. "Interesting," he murmured under his breath. "Taller than the typical aspirant, not as stocky either…doubtless a product of Seiryuu's weaker gravitational field. Adapting to Nocturne and Prometheus may prove difficult in that respect. There is some muscle definition here and there, little in the way of fat…" He trailed off, then spoke a little louder. "Do you exercise frequently, Tetsuo?"

"Y-yes," the boy admitted.

"Doing what?"

"W-well, hunting f-for one thing. A-and running too. P-plus there's all the work I do helping out around the f-forge and in the f-fields d-during the harvest; n-not easy, that s-stuff. A-and I've ridden h-horses from time to t-time…"

Locke held up a hand to silence him. "That will suffice. It's plain to me that you aren't lacking in physical activity. Hold out your arm, please."

Tetsuo did so. The Apothecary took the outstretched arm by the wrist, and with his free hand he plucked a syringe from his belt. Designed for human fingers, the needle looked incredibly small in his grasp; yet he handled it with a surprising amount of grace, bringing it around to rest above the boy's ulnar artery. "This may sting a little," he warned. "I am going to take a sample of your blood. Please try to hold still."

The boy nodded mutely, his eyes wide and fixed on the gleaming point of the syringe. He winced as the needle pierced his skin, but did not cry out, and he watched the blood be drawn into its cylindrical depths with a morbid sort of fascination.

Once it was full Locke held the syringe up to the light. He inspected it for a moment, turning the needle this way and that, before nodding and tucking it into a compartment on his narthecium gauntlet. "I shall run some tests on this, to make sure there are no impurities in your genetic code that might make you incompatible with the implants."

The Apothecary clapped his hands together, and in response a servitor emerged from a secluded alcove at the back of the room. Gore did not miss the way Tetsuo sharply sucked in a breath as he caught sight of the drone, nor how the boy drew back half a pace as the slack-jawed, dead-eyed automaton hobbled over. Its bionic arms terminated in a pair of vicelike clamps perfect for lifting heavy loads; in one of these clamps it held a green one-piece outfit that the Chaplain recognized instantly.

The servitor came to a halt within arm's reach of Locke and wordlessly held the garment out to him; taking it in both hands, the Apothecary turned to face Tetsuo. "This bodyglove is worn by all of the chapter's aspirants," Locke explained. "You shall wear it at all times from now on."

Gore, for his part, pointed to the pile of clothes on the floor. "Incinerate these," he told the servitor.

"Compliance," it said in a dull monotone.

* * *

Tetsuo tugged at the collar of his new garments, a scowl on his face. The bodyglove was unlike any clothes he'd ever seen or worn, a single unbroken piece of clothing that covered everything but his head and hands. It clung tightly to his frame, uncomfortably so, and it left him with a profound need to scratch at a spot between his shoulder blades that he simply could not reach.

_Nobody could find this thing comfortable,_ he thought sourly. _Then again, that's probably the point…_

The stern voice of Gore cut through his thoughts like a knife. "Are you paying attention, Osamu Tetsuo?"

The boy flinched. "Y-yes, Chaplain," he stammered apologetically.

The Space Marine had removed his helmet some time before, giving Tetsuo an unobstructed view of his face. Like Sar'khon, the Chaplain had ebony skin and orange eyes that seemed to glow with an inner light like embers; and like the Captain, Gore's face was a mass of ritualistic scars and tattoos. He raised one hairless brow, the flickering light of the brazier at his side throwing these marks into stark relief. "Then what was I saying?"

Tetsuo hesitated, his eyes wandering as he took a moment to marshal his thoughts. He was sitting cross-legged on the floor of what he assumed were Gore's personal chambers. It was a surprisingly austere place, all things considered; apart from the brazier that was the room's only source of light, the cot on which the Chaplain currently sat and the recessed alcove where his armour currently stood, having been removed with some assistance from those robed servants a while ago, there were no real furnishings to speak of. Gore himself wore a strange tunic made of green cloth that went down to his knees and left his arms bare; in the dancing light of the fire, Tetsuo could see that those tattoos covered just about every inch of the Chaplain's body. He could also see just how powerfully-built Gore was; even without his black armour and its massive pauldrons, the Salamander was broader across the shoulders than the length of Tetsuo's arm, and his ebony limbs bulged with muscles that would have looked swollen and painful on an ordinary man. It was more than a little intimidating, to be perfectly honest.

"You were starting to tell me about the Salamanders' history?" he offered hesitantly.

"I did, yes." The Chaplain's eyes narrowed in reproach. "That was five minutes ago."

Tetsuo cringed. "My apologies, Chaplain. It's just that this damn thing I'm wearing makes it so hard to concentrate."

"A Space Marine is expected to operate in all conditions, and all battlefields. He must remain ever vigilant, and not allow himself to become distracted by such trifling things." Gore let out a sigh. "I shall start again. And this time, pay attention."

The boy weathered this rebuke in silence, doing his best to ignore the itch between his shoulders as the Space Marine began to tell his tale from the beginning.

"Tens of millennia ago, mankind held unquestioned dominion over the stars. Then came Old Night, the Age of Strife, when powerful Warp storms raged across the galaxy, making communication and travel between humanity's worlds impossible for thousands of years. These worlds were left isolated from one another, developing in solitude; standing alone, dying alone. When the storms finally abated, the God-Emperor, mightiest of men, sought to reunite the scattered elements of humanity under His rule; and to do this, He needed warriors like no other, warriors who could stand in the face of all the great and terrible horrors a hostile universe could conceive of and beat them into submission. So He created the Legiones Astartes, the twenty Space Marine Legions; and to lead these superhuman Legions He created twenty beings even greater than they, twenty gods wrought in His image and embodying His qualities—the Primarchs.

"But even as He created His sons," Gore continued, "other forces looked on with scorn and fear. The Dark Gods of Chaos, the Archenemy of mankind, feared what the Emperor and His sons might accomplish together, and so they used their insidious powers to steal the infant Primarchs from His gene-laboratories on Holy Terra and scatter them across the galaxy. It was on the volcanic world of Nocturne that our gene-father landed, falling from the heavens onto a world caught in the grip of a great tectonic upheaval; he was found by a kind man, a blacksmith named N'Bel, who took the baby in and raised him as his own, naming him Vulkan.

"The people of Vulkan's village were astounded by him, for it quickly became apparent that he was no ordinary boy. In the span of three Terran years he had grown from a baby to full maturity, becoming stronger and larger than any man in the town; and with his great strength came great intelligence. He was a master of metallurgy, the greatest on the entire planet, and it was not long before he had learned all his teachers had to offer him and began teaching them in turn. Vulkan quickly gained the respect and admiration of all, and for a time all was well."

The Chaplain's expression darkened. "Then came the eldar."

"Eldar?" Tetsuo echoed.

"Aliens," Gore hissed. "Foul creatures that torture and butcher humankind for their own sick amusement, treating humans like toys and chattel. Be glad it was the orks who destroyed your village, Osamu Tetsuo, for they at least would have killed your family quickly; the eldar would not have been as merciful."

The boy shuddered, grimacing at the thought of whatever fate could be worse than death at the hands of the Oni.

Nodding in satisfaction, the Chaplain went on. "The eldar made frequent raids on Nocturne in those times, seeing the planet and its people as easy prey. This was such a common occurrence, in fact, that every person in Vulkan's village had created their own hiding place to avoid capture at the aliens' foul hands. But when the raiders came in Vulkan's fourth year on Nocturne, he refused to hide and stood out in the open at the center of the village, armed with nothing more than his two smithing hammers."

Gore held a hand aloft, his voice rising. "So inspiring was he that the people of his village left their hiding places and joined him in its defence, and with Vulkan leading them they defeated the eldar decisively, sending the alien marauders _running_ with their tails between their legs! Word spread quickly of this incredible victory, and within weeks the leaders of Nocturne's seven largest villages travelled to meet with Vulkan, where they swore that never again would they cower in the face of alien oppression. And in honour and celebration of the Primarch's victory, it was decided to hold a celebration.

"In the midst of the festivities," he continued, his tone level once more, "a stranger appeared. No one in the town had ever seen a man quite like him before, for he was pale-skinned and wore outlandish clothes. He asked only to compete, claiming that he could best anyone in the town. How they laughed at these boasts, for who could possibly best Vulkan in any arena? Nevertheless, Vulkan agreed, and he and the stranger wagered that whoever lost the competition would forever serve the victor. Eight days of competition followed, in which Vulkan and the stranger did battle in many superhuman feats of strength and endurance—and by the end of the eighth day, they were tied.

"Seeing how evenly matched the two competitors were, and realizing that no ordinary sport would be enough of a challenge to produce a winner, the village elders decided that for the final event they would be given twenty-four hours to construct a weapon and hunt down a salamander, one of the great flame-resistant reptiles that give our chapter its name. And while such a feat would be all but impossible for an ordinary man, they realized that this alone would barely test the two competitors' abilities—and so, as a final stipulation whoever brought back the biggest salamander would be declared the winner.

"Arming themselves, Vulkan and the stranger climbed a tall peak where the firedrakes, the largest and most dangerous of the salamanders, were known to live; and parted ways to begin the hunt. It was not long before Vulkan found and slew a particularly large firedrake, and without waiting for the stranger he began making his way down to the village. Unfortunately, he had not realized that the mountain was actually a volcano, and suddenly it erupted, casting him over a cliff! He managed to grab hold of the cliff's edge in one hand, but he could not pull himself up; for he held his firedrake in the other and was determined not to let go. There he remained for hours, his titanic strength beginning to waver and ebb, until finally he realized that he had to choose between saving his prize or his life.

"Before he could make the decision, however, the stranger appeared, an even larger drake draped across his shoulders. As soon as he saw the Primarch's predicament, the stranger selflessly hurled his own drake into a lava flow to make a bridge, sacrificing it in order to save Vulkan's life. They returned to the village, where the elders declared Vulkan the victor; but to the amazement of his people, the Primarch knelt before the stranger and said that any man who valued life over pride was worthy of his service. At that moment, the stranger cast off the illusions he had disguised himself with to reveal—"

"That he was the Emperor?" Tetsuo cut in.

Gore froze in the middle of his narration and shot the boy a cool look.

The boy shrugged. "I could see where it was going."

The Chaplain pressed his lips together into a thin line. "Quite. That is the tale of how our gene-father was reunited with his sire, and how Vulkan came to lead the Eighteenth Legion, which would be renamed the Salamanders in his honour."

"Forgive me," said Tetsuo, "but I have a question. Is Vulkan still around?"

"He is," said Gore, "though he is no longer with us."

The boy tilted his head to one side. "What's that supposed to mean? Where is he?"

"We do not know. The Primarch left us long ago."

"Why?"

The Chaplain leaned forward and tented his fingers. "To answer that, Osamu Tetsuo, I must first tell you of the role we played in the Great Crusade…and of the dark days of the Great Betrayal which followed it."

And he did. For the next few hours Tetsuo sat and listened as Gore told him of the broad history of the Imperium of Man, from its foundations during the Great Crusade, to the ruin that befell it during what he called the Horus Heresy, and all that had happened in the eight millennia since. And as the hours rolled by and he learned more and more, the boy felt a steadily growing sense of horrified fascination take root in the pit of his gut. He realized that what Gore had told him back in the daimyo's palace had been correct: the galaxy _was_ a vaster place than he could ever have imagined, and far more horrible besides.

When Gore had finished, the boy could only shake his head. "Why?" He asked. "Why did Horus betray his father? What led half the Legions to side with him? Why did they fall to Chaos?"

"Such questions are not to be dwelt upon, Osamu Tetsuo," Gore said, not unkindly. "To try and put yourself in the shoes of heretics and traitors is to take the first steps on the road to damnation. Put such thoughts from your mind, and know only that they deserve our scorn and hate for turning from the Emperor's light." The Chaplain cocked his head to one side, as though listening to a sound that only he could hear, then fixed his luminous gaze on Tetsuo. "The hour grows late. You should get some rest; tomorrow your training begins, and I need you to be at full strength."

Tetsuo blinked and glanced around the room. "Well, where do I sleep?"

"The floor," was Gore's curt response.

"…you're kidding, right? Please tell me you're kidding."

Without any humour whatsoever, the Chaplain plucked the thin sheet from his cot and tossed it to Tetsuo. The boy caught it by reflex, looked down at the coarse fabric, looked to Gore, then back to the sheet and back to Gore. "You're not kidding." It was a statement of fact, not a question.

"Indeed I am not." The Salamander lay down on his cot, staring up at the ceiling. "Sleep well, Osamu Tetsuo."

And without another word he shut his eyes and went to sleep, as quickly as dousing a candle.

Tetsuo watched the Chaplain sleep for a few moments, then turned and spread the sheet out beneath him to make a rough futon. Once that was done he lay down, clasped his hands over his chest, and tried to go to sleep.

It eluded him for a long time, the sounds of Gore's low breathing and the soft crackling of the brazier conspiring to keep him awake, and when he finally fell asleep his slumber was far from restful. He tossed and turned, his dreams plagued by visions of an eternity of carnage and slaughter, and the cruel laughter of thirsting gods.

* * *

**Author's Note:** And so Tetsuo's new life has begun. A lot of talk and exposition in this chapter, I know; fortunately for those of you who'd prefer some action, the next chapter will have plenty of it. Tune in next week as Gore puts our protagonist through a grueling crash course that will decide the boy's fate!


	6. Training

**Training**

Tetsuo's sleep had been less than pleasant, as was the way he found himself being roughly shaken awake. Blinking the sleep from his eyes, the boy saw only a dark shape hovering over him, a shape that gradually resolved into the kneeling, stern-faced form of Chaplain Gore.

"Wake up," the Space Marine told him. "Your training begins now."

Tetsuo sat up with a yawn, rubbing at his eyes. He felt profoundly tired, like he hadn't managed to get any rest at all. "What time is it?" he murmured.

The Salamander's response was curt. "Oh-three-hundred-thirty hours."

"Oh-three…wait." A frown came to the boy's face as he puzzled out the meaning of Gore's words. "It's half-past three in the morning? What the hell time did I go to sleep, then?"

"Twenty-three hundred hours."

Tetsuo stared at him. "You mean to tell me I only got four and a half hours of sleep?" he asked, incredulous.

"A Space Marine can function on as little as four." The Chaplain stood up and walked over to that recessed alcove where his black armour stood. Tetsuo blinked, trying to see what Gore was doing, but the Space Marine's broad frame blocked his view. "I've heard from Captain Sar'khon and Sergeant N'Mani that you've some skill with a lasgun," Gore went on, not turning away from whatever he was doing. "They say you're quite a marksman. But tell me, Osamu Tetsuo, just how familiar are you with that weapon?"

Confused by the question, Tetsuo took a moment to respond. "Well, I know how to take one apart and perform maintenance on it…"

Gore's head nodded in approval. "That's good. The Salamanders are expected to emulate the Primarch and uphold his virtues; the very least of these is in knowing how to take care of our weapons and equipment." He turned away from that alcove and approached Tetsuo, letting the boy see that he held a boxy, angular handgun in his hands.

"This is a bolt pistol," he said, holding the gun out for Tetsuo's inspection. "It is the sidearm of a Space Marine, and a weapon of far greater complexity and destructive power than a simple lasgun. It fires self-propelled, armour-penetrating mass-reactive shells that explode within the target, blowing them apart from the inside. Quite deadly, as I'm sure you can imagine."

Tetsuo nodded, swallowing a sudden lump in his throat. He didn't need to imagine this gun's destructive potential; he'd seen it for himself outside the walls of Murosaki, when he'd saved the life of that Salamander from the Oni's kamikaze creature.

Gore slid the bolt pistol's sickle-shaped magazine out of its housing, before placing the gun itself on the floor before Tetsuo. "I want you to strip this weapon down to its component parts and then reassemble it—without this," he added, holding up the magazine. "It would be rather unfortunate if you were to blow your own head off."

The boy narrowed his eyes. "Thanks for the vote of confidence, Chaplain," he drawled.

The Salamander's only response was a mild furrowing of his scarred brows. He looked as if he were about to say something, but at that moment there came a chime from the door. Glancing towards it, the Chaplain said, "Enter."

The door slid open with a pneumatic hiss, and through it filed three of those robed men that Tetsuo had seen wandering the halls the day before. He eyed them curiously, noting that they obviously weren't Space Marines; they didn't have anything even remotely resembling Gore's gargantuan build. In the flickering light of the torch he could see that they were all dark-skinned, albeit not as much as the Salamanders themselves, and their eyes did not glow. They eyed him in turn, looking surprised to find a boy here of all places.

"Get on the bed, child," Gore instructed. "The chapter-serfs need room to work."

Tetsuo did as the Chaplain instructed, picking up the sheet and the bolt pistol as he did so, and watched the figures in rapt fascination as they reverently took Gore's armour out of its alcove and began to assemble it around him. "Are you going into battle?" he asked.

"Not at all," the Chaplain replied, lifting his arms to give the serfs better access as they put on his chestplate. "I go to lead my brothers in the morning prayers, and then there is weapons practice. I shall return within two hours; when I do, I expect a demonstration of your ability to fieldstrip this weapon."

Within minutes he was fully attired in that imposing suit of black armour once more, his face concealed behind that death's head mask, that amulet about his neck and that eagle-capped rod—which he had called a crozius arcanum, the boy recalled—held in his left hand. Their labours complete, the serfs bowed in unison and filed out of the room. Gore strode after them, pausing in the doorway to glance at Tetsuo over that leering skull pauldron. "Carry on, aspirant."

With those words he turned and left, the door sliding shut after him.

Once he was gone Tetsuo held the bolt pistol up to the flickering light and started to turn it this way and that, looking for any sort of seam to serve as a starting point. Designed for hands bigger than his own, the gun felt awkward and heavy in his grasp. Eventually he managed to find a likely spot, and after setting it down on the floor to keep whatever was inside from scattering all over the place he started to pry the gun open, succeeding after a minute or two.

What lay within the gun made a sinking feeling form in the pit of his gut. "You've got to be kidding me…"

Gore hadn't lied when he'd said it was complex. The lasgun he'd used during the defence of Murosaki had had a good number of parts within its casing, but nothing quite like this; there were so many tiny parts in there, so many moving bits and little doodads that he didn't even know where to begin.

Sighing, the boy began to pluck pieces out at random, hoping that he'd remember where they all went once it was time to put the gun back together. This would take a while…

* * *

The door slid open at Gore's approach, revealing the familiar frugality of his personal chambers. The boy had only just begun closing the bolt pistol's casing, only to look up from his work as the Chaplain stepped inside. "You have figured it out, then?"

Tetsuo nodded.

Gore folded his arms across his chestplate. "Show me."

The boy did so, a mask of concentration settling over his face as he reopened the casing and began to remove the weapon's components, setting them out in small piles of related materials so that he would always know what went where. The Chaplain watched this painstakingly meticulous disassembly and the subsequent reassembly without comment, though were he being honest with himself Gore would have had to say that he was impressed. In a little more than two hours, the boy had managed to figure out exactly where everything went; it took most aspirants somewhat longer to grasp such a thing.

Finally the boy snapped the casing shut and held it out for Gore's inspection. He took it from the child, turning it over. Everything seemed to be in order, and not a single thing sounded or felt out of place.

"Five minutes," he said at length. "Not bad, for a beginner."

Tetsuo allowed himself the barest hint of a smile. "Thank you, Chaplain."

That smile faded when Gore gave the pistol back to him. "Now do it again, Tetsuo. And this time, do it in half the time."

* * *

"A Space Marine," Gore was saying, "is the ultimate exemplar of humanity. Only the very best can aspire to join their ranks, because only the very best can hope to survive the surgical procedures which will turn them from mortal men into the Emperor's Angels of Death."

Tetsuo did not answer, too busy performing push-ups at a punishing pace to spare the breath. He had no idea how many he'd performed so far, or how many were still left to go; he'd lost count somewhere around seventy-five. Sweat matted his hair, running down his face in thick rivulets, forcing him to close his eyes. His arms were on fire, his muscles screaming in protest, begging him to stop and let them rest.

But he couldn't stop. Not yet. Not until the Chaplain was satisfied.

"If you are to become one of us, you must be in perfect physical condition. A healthy body will improve your chances, and more to the point it will prepare you for the trials." The Salamander held up a hand. "You may stop."

No sooner had those words reached Tetsuo's ears than he collapsed, breath exploding from his mouth in a wheeze as he landed on the deck. He lay there for a long moment, blinking sweat from his eyes, his chest rising and falling with every panting breath as he struggled to calm himself down. He could feel his heart beating rapidly against his ribcage, like it was trying very hard to burst out of his body.

A dark shape appeared at the corner of his vision—an arm covered in plates of black ceramite, a flask of water held in its outstretched hand. "Drink," Gore said. "You must remain hydrated."

Weakly, the boy lifted an arm and took that flask, its transparent surface feeling unnaturally cool to the touch. Rolling onto his back with a groan, Tetsuo twisted the cap off, brought the flask to his lips and greedily began to drink, paying no heed to the water spilling out of his mouth and onto his chin. Once he was done he let out a sigh. "Water never tasted so good," he wheezed.

The Chaplain walked around Tetsuo in a slow circle, staring down at him with that skull-faced helm. "Two hundred and twenty push-ups, in four minutes. Better than I would have expected, Osamu Tetsuo."

The boy tracked Gore's movements with his eyes, feeling too weak to lift his head. Had that really only been four minutes? It felt a hell of a lot longer than that…

"The pain and exhaustion you feel is nothing to be ashamed of," Gore went on. "It is in human nature to shy away from it, for pain brings fear, and fear has kept mankind alive throughout history. But Space Marines know no fear, and they do not allow pain to master them; they press on in the face of death, never retreating, uncompromising in their resolve." He came to a halt, looming overhead. "How do you feel?"

"Better, I think," Tetsuo breathed. And it was true; now that he'd had some time to catch his breath and let his boy rest, he was indeed starting to feel better.

"Good." Gore leaned down and snatched the flask from Tetsuo's hands. "Then you can continue. Sit-ups, this time."

The boy let out a weary groan.

"None of that," the Chaplain said reproachfully. "You wanted this, Osamu Tetsuo, and now you must pay the price."

Grumbling under his breath, the boy placed his hands under his head, bent his legs so that the knees were pointing straight up at the ceiling, and got to work.

* * *

"This. Is. In_sane_," Tetsuo hissed through clenched teeth.

He stood before Gore in a small room, legs planted firmly on the ground and arms held overhead. They were shaking, and beads of sweat ran freely down a face contorted with effort. Bright lights shone down from overhead, flooding his eyes with their harsh glare, throwing the object he held in his hands into stark relief.

Gore's tone was calm, almost infuriatingly so. "It is tradition," the Chaplain said. "Many of the trials aspirants must undertake emulate the contests held between our Primarch and the Emperor. Their very first competition was to see who could hold an anvil overhead the longest; it was declared a tie when both competitors showed no signs of tiring after half a day."

Jaw clenched and neck bulging from the effort of holding this damn anvil overhead, Tetsuo risked a glance at the Space Marine. "You. Don't. Seriously. Expect—"

"No, I don't. These trials _emulate _Vulkan's contests of old, they don't duplicate them; no ordinary human could hope to replicate such feats of strength. Even a Space Marine would grow tired after a few hours of this. Our gene-father and his sire exist on a level as far above Astartes as Astartes are to baseline humans. The goal is merely to see how long you can keep this up before your strength gives out."

Well, that wouldn't take long, the boy thought sourly. It felt like he'd been holding this damn thing above his head for an eternity; the stupid anvil must have weighed a tonne. His arms were screaming at him, and so were his shoulders and his back. The trembling intensified, his fingers spasming, a sure sign that he was reaching his limit.

"How. Long…?" he snarled.

There was only a slight pause before the Chaplain answered. "Three minutes and thirty seconds. Keep going."

Tetsuo sucked in a hissing breath. His lower lip found its way between his teeth, and without meaning to he bit down hard enough to feel the warm, coppery taste of blood flow across his tongue.

A hand spasmed, he didn't know which; it didn't matter. All that matter was that the anvil was suddenly falling towards his face, and he let out a gasp, clenching his eyes tightly shut for all the good that would do—

A clang of metal striking metal split the air. There was no pain.

Tetsuo cracked his eyes open, and saw a black arm held out over his head, holding the anvil in the palm of its outsized hand.

"Four minutes and three seconds." Gore lowered his arm, bringing the anvil to his chestplate. "Not the best I've ever seen…but certainly not the worst, either. Well done."

Letting out a sigh of relief, the boy let himself drop to the floor, arms dangling at his side. "What was the best time?" he wheezed.

"Fifteen minutes."

"Fifteen?" Tetsuo let out a cough, eyes wide. "And this was from a kid half my age?"

"Nocturne is a harsh world," the Chaplain said. "Only the hardiest of children can survive in it, and only the hardiest of these are fit to join our chapter. You must become as hardy if you are to join us, Osamu Tetsuo." He held out his free hand, silently offering to help the boy up.

Tetsuo looked at the hand, then grunted and rose to his feet on his own. "What next, then?"

Gore lowered his arm, and when next he spoke there was a note of mild disappointment. "Smithing. And after that, more exercise. Then it will be time for your lessons."

"And what about free time? Do I get any of that?"

"No."

The boy let out a long sigh. "Lead on, then…"

* * *

So went the next few weeks of Osamu Tetsuo's life, his days spent in a never-ending maelstrom of constant physical activity, training, and education. As the days rolled by, he found himself becoming acclimatized to this harsh regime; the exercises did not wear him out as quickly and thoroughly as they did during his second day aboard the _Promethean Anvil_, and while he was not enjoying them per se he did not loathe them either. And he could not deny that it was making him fitter than he'd ever been, getting his body into tip-top shape.

As his physical capabilities increased, so did his knowledge. Every second that Gore wasn't driving him to exercise was spent in teaching the boy more of the Salamanders—their history, their beliefs and values, the ways of their Promethean cult. Loyalty, self-reliance, self-sacrifice: these virtues were beaten into his skull until he was practically mumbling them in his sleep. He learned how to fieldstrip a bolt pistol and reassemble it in a minute. He was taught how to use the forge, a rather different beast than the ones in Takuoka, and he learned how to maintain and care for a Space Marine's power armour, a skill that he occasionally put to work on Gore's own armour.

Most importantly, he came to loathe the enemies of man. Mutants, aliens, heretics, daemons…all were wretched things, and all deserved to be cleansed.

After three weeks had gone by, Gore took him aside. "I have taught you all that I can so far," he said, "and subjected you to as many of the trials as were possible. There is but one left for you to face, Osamu Tetsuo, and it can only be done on Nocturne itself."

"And what is this challenge?" the boy asked, without a hint of fear.

Gore said nothing for a moment, feeling a surge of pride at how far his pupil had come. "You must climb the sacred slopes of Mount Deathfire, as Vulkan and the Emperor did on the final day of their competition. There you must face our chapter's namesake, and prove yourself worthy of joining our ranks. You must hunt down a salamander, and capture or kill it."

Tetsuo furrowed his brow, a determined expression on his face. "What must I do to prepare?"

"For now, you shall continue as you have done," Gore said. "But with one additional caveat; from now on, when you perform your exercises and your duties, you will do them in three times the normal gravity."

The boy's eyes narrowed in understanding. Nocturne, from what Gore had told him, had a stronger gravitational field than Seiryuu; that would make doing just about anything much more difficult than he was accustomed to.

"I am ready," he said at length.

"Then let us begin," Gore replied.

* * *

A standard month after the _Promethean Anvil_ left Seiryuu, it arrived at its destination. It tore free of the Immaterium in a burst of brilliant light, otherworldly energies coruscating across its Gellar fields in arcs of iridescent lightning before dissipating into the ether; in its wake, the hole it had torn upon its entrance to realspace collapsed in a riot of colour like a star winking out of existence. Now safely out of the Warp, the strike cruiser let the protective envelope formed by its Gellar field drop and brought its sublight engines online, powering towards the binary world that was its ultimate goal.

Seen from orbit, the planet Nocturne would be an ugly sight to most observers. Whereas Seiryuu was a scenic and pleasant orb of blue, green and brown, graced with normally-gentle cloud cover, the homeworld of the Salamanders was all but totally hidden beneath a black shroud of choking grit and volcanic ash. Here and there hints of blue and grey could be seen poking through breaks in the dark haze, but these were few and far between, and they seldom stayed open for long. Every now and then flashes of scabrous red light shone from beneath the ash clouds—great volcanoes in the throes of fury, their eruptions so powerful and violent that they could be seen from space.

Its twin Prometheus loomed over the world, casting a shadow across the already-dark shroud of ash and dust. Larger by far than Seiryuu's moon Genbu, almost equal in size and mass to the planet it orbited, the satellite hovered closer than most satellites would to their parent worlds, its gravity tugging at the planet below and sending Nocturne into paroxysms of greater volcanic fury.

This was not a placid world like Seiryuu had been, mild in climate and weather save for that planet's violent storms. This was not a planet where humans could live in comfort. It was a harsh world, a brutal world, where survival was never guaranteed and the very landscape could kill you as easily as the great reptilian beasts that prowled its volcanic plateaus.

It was a perfect world for a chapter of the Emperor's Angels of Death to call their home.

The strike cruiser powered across the void to Prometheus, eager to dock with the fortress-monastery and offload its passengers. After more than five years in the field, the warriors of the Third Company were glad to be home and looking forward to setting foot upon Nocturne's surface once more; many wished to reunite with their friends and family, and learn what had transpired while they were gone.

As the _Anvil_ approached its destination, a solitary Thunderhawk came flying out of the cruiser's port embarkation deck, its engines flaring brightly as it powered down Nocturne's gravity well and vanished into the shroud of ash.

It was time for Osamu Tetsuo to face his final trial.

* * *

Tetsuo leapt from the gunship's open ramp, grunting as he landed on the ash-blackened rock several metres below. Hot winds lashed at him, running dust-choked fingers through his hair and making the hempen cape about his shoulders billow like a thing possessed. He turned around, looking up at the hovering Thunderhawk, locking eyes with his mentor.

Gore stood atop the ramp, arms folded as always. "You know what must be done, Osamu Tetsuo," he called. "I have taught and guided you as best I can; now it is up to you. Return here and use the beacon when you have finished. May the Emperor and the Primarch smile upon you this day. Into the fires of battle."

The aspirant clenched his free hand into a fist and rapped it against his chest. "Unto the anvil of war," he called back, his words muffled and tinny from the oxygen mask he wore.

Gore nodded, returning the salute, and stepped back into the hold. The boarding ramp swung up with a whine of hydraulics, slamming shut a moment later; and no sooner had this happened than the Thunderhawk turned and rocketed away, quickly dwindling to a tiny speck on the ashen grey horizon.

Tetsuo watched it leave, eyes narrowing behind his protective goggles as he got his first look at Nocturne's landscape. To say that it was inhospitable would have been an understatement; nothing but seething lava flows, jagged black peaks and desolate grey plains as far as the eye could see. Ash and grit filled the air, and in the distance he could see the faded flashes of faraway volcanic eruptions, their roars rumbling over the howling winds like thunderclaps.

He turned around once more, tilting his head back to take in the sight that lay before him. Of all the mountains visible in this bleak panorama, Mount Deathfire was by far the largest and that was not simply his perspective talking. It stretched high into the air, its peak lost in the foul clouds, rivers of magma running sluggishly down its sides like blood oozing from a wound in the earth. Somewhere, up on the slopes of this mighty volcano, lurked the beast he had been sent to capture or kill—and all he had to do that with was the knife sheathed at his hip and the spear held in his left hand.

Daunting, to say the least, but he wouldn't let that stop him—not after he'd already come this far.

With that thought in mind he set off, following a natural path that wound its way up the mountainside. Was this the very same path Vulkan had walked thousands of years ago, in his quest to slay a salamander? Was he literally following in the Primarch's footsteps?

A smile came to his lips, the thought inspiring him.

On he went, climbing higher and higher, leaving his landing site far behind, silent in the face of the howling winds, the distant rumbling of the volcanoes, and the crunching of the gravel and ash beneath his feet. Progress was slow, slower than he might have preferred. Weeks spent slaving over the forge in the bowels of the _Promethean Anvil_ had given him a tolerance for great heat, but even so his trek was far from comfortable; the hot winds of this place left his hair and face damp with sweat, and between that and the ash blowing everywhere he was forced to stop and clean his goggles far more frequently than he might have preferred. But still he soldiered on, remaining ever alert, eyes constantly sweeping the path ahead for any sign of danger, straining his ears in the hopes of picking up any sound over the ambient noise.

Several hours into his journey, the path ahead curved sharply upwards, forming a wall several times taller than he was. Not about to let such a simple obstacle stop him, Tetsuo searched its surface for any cracks and depressions deep enough to act as hand- and footholds; he found an ideal spot in short order, and in no time at all he was clambering up the barrier. Upon reaching the top of the wall, he saw that it overlooked a deep channel in the mountainside, perhaps thirty feet across and twice as deep, its far end curving around the slope out of sight. It made him think of an ancient riverbed, carved into the mountain long ago by the constant passage of water—or lava, in this case—and the thin, bubbling stream of magma which slithered along at the channel's deepest point only served to reinforce that notion.

He spent a moment studying the channel, pondering the best way to proceed. The far wall looked easy enough to climb, once he reached it, and the lava stream seemed narrow enough that he could safely jump over it with a running start. It would be hot as hell, sure, and dangerously so—but he'd only be near it for a second or two at the very most.

His mind made up, the aspirant began to sidle over the top of the wall…only to freeze as a low, rumbling hiss like hot irons being raked over coals reached his ears.

He froze, turning slowly towards the noise, his gaze settling on a particularly large and rough clump of rock lying a short distance from the stream's opposite bank.

It twitched, and his eyes widened as he realized that he wasn't looking at a rock at all.

It was a massive thing, at least six metres from snout to tail and quite possibly longer. Ash-covered flanks that rippled with muscle rose and fell in time to the creature's slow, powerful breaths, its dirty scales gleaming orange in the light of the magma. A ridge of spines ran from the base of its neck to the tip of its tail, quivering softly in the hot breeze. A bony frill grew from the back of its skull, covering its neck in a protective collar. Its crocodilian jaws seemed to go on forever, full of curved teeth that gleamed like molten steel. Four powerful legs lay sprawled out at its sides, ending in splayed claws half as long as the boy was tall.

Tetsuo swallowed, his mouth suddenly dry for reasons that had nothing to do with the heat. Gore had told him much about the salamanders which gave the chapter its name, but nothing could have prepared him for actually seeing one of these awesome, terrible beasts in the flesh. The beast was _huge_, not as big as the squiggoth had been perhaps, but still far larger than he was. It could probably swallow him whole in a single bite, or disembowel him with a single rake of those massive claws. How was he supposed to _kill_ this thing?

The salamander let out another rumbling hiss, the sound like an avalanche of boulders. He ducked down below the lip of the wall, his heart beating rapidly. He didn't think it had noticed him; it just seemed to be basking in the heat of the stream.

It wasn't too late, a part of him whispered. He could still get away; he could turn back now, without ever having to fight that thing, and—

And what? Return to the Thunderhawk in shame? Be branded a coward and a failure, after all he'd endured to get this far?

The boy narrowed his eyes. Never in a million years.

And with that thought in mind, he climbed back up and pulled himself over the top of the wall, beginning to make his way down the other side.

The salamander stirred, its massive head rising off the ground and turning slowly to look in his direction. It watched him descend, eyes unblinking and cold as flint, tongues of smoke curling from its nostrils. A long, forked tongue darted from between its front teeth, tasting the air. He almost felt as if the beast were studying him, as a cat might study a tasty morsel unfortunate enough to stumble into its field of vision before moving in for the kill.

He reached the base of the wall and came to a halt, sweeping his cloak aside to grasp his spear in both hands. He'd made it himself the day before, its head fashioned from adamantium and its shaft made of ceramite, with padding worked in to serve as grips. He clutched it tightly now, his knuckles turning white, his breath sounding particularly loud in his ears.

The salamander continued to watch him for a few more seconds, whatever thoughts might be taking shape within its primitive brain utterly inscrutable. Then, its reptilian eyes narrowing into vertical slits, it planted its feet in the dirt and lifted itself off the ground. Those man-eating jaws opened wide, slowly, the back of its throat glowing as if a furnace blazed at the creature's heart, and it let out a roar—a deep, terrible sound like the earth itself splitting open in an earthquake.

Tetsuo flinched, but he held his ground. Part of him wanted to turn tail and run, but he crushed that urge. He knew the beast was trying to scare him off, but he wouldn't let the monster win. "I mustn't run away," he whispered. "I mustn't run away…I mustn't run away…"

He let out a long, shuddering breath, and a mask of determination slipped over his face. "Come on, then," he called. "Face me!"

With a snort, the monstrous reptile lumbered into motion. Moving slowly, swinging its legs forward in sequence, it stepped over the lava stream like it wasn't even there. Every step it took threw up small clouds of dust and ash, every footfall shaking the ground and scarring the rock with shallow impressions of its splayed claws.

The sight of such a beast bearing down on them might have sent an ordinary man scrambling for the hills, and Tetsuo would have been lying to himself if he failed to acknowledge that there was a part of him that wanted to do just that. But he would not give in to fear, and he would not flee; he would face this monster the proper way, with courage and honour.

So he held his ground, feet planted firmly on the ashen earth, eyes narrowed in concentration as the salamander bore down on him, waiting for the right moment…

It didn't take long for the beast to reach him, small as the channel was. Tilting its head the monster lunged, jaws opening wide—

Tetsuo threw himself forward, feeling the air whistle over his back as those fang-filled jaws snapped shut scant inches above him. He hit the ground shoulder-first, grunting as he used his momentum to turn the tumble into a roll, and came up on his feet. The salamander's neck was just above, well within reach of his spear.

He grit his teeth, thrusting the weapon upward.

A furious roar split the air as his spear struck, its adamantium head stabbing into the soft flesh of the monster's neck. Blood ran down the shaft in thick rivulets, staining his hands red. He jerked the spear back and forth, trying to widen the wound and turn it into a fatal injury, but before he could get far with that the salamander reared up and backed away, freeing itself from the weapon lodged in its soft underbelly.

It retreated to a safe distance, well out of Tetsuo's reach, and let out another coal-raking hiss. Blood dripped from the wound in its throat, leaving a crimson trail across the ground, but somehow he knew the monster wasn't in peril; somehow, deep in his gut, he understood that it would take a lot more than this one injury to bring it down.

Tetsuo tightened his grip on the blood-slicked shaft, a grim smile coming to his lips. "Is that all you've got?"

Eyes narrowed in hatred, the salamander turned itself so that its spine ran parallel to the lava stream. Never taking its furious gaze off him, the majestic reptile brought its tail to bear, lifting the muscular appendage high overhead.

The boy's cocky smirk faded with realization. "I guess not…"

The tail came down in a blur, moving so fast that the air whistled around it. Tetsuo threw himself to the side, just barely managing to avoid getting crushed underneath its massive bulk. Before he could get to his feet it lashed out again, striking him across the back with so much force that he was knocked sprawling, grunting and crying out in pain as he went tumbling across the ground for a good twenty feet. When he finally came to a halt he could do nothing but lay there in a daze, staring up at the ashen sky through battered, dust-caked goggles. "Oww…"

The salamander's triumphant roar brought him back to his senses, the reminder that he was in mortal danger triggering a surge of adrenaline to dispel the pain and disorientation of his injuries. He sat up, wiping at the lenses of his goggles, only to smear blood across them and make it even harder to see. Snarling, he tore the protective eyewear from his face, wincing as motes of ash and dust danced before his eyes and made them feel dry and irritated, and looked towards the noise.

The salamander was approaching once more, snapping its jaws with relish.

Tetsuo sprang to his feet, grimacing at the pain this action sent shooting through his back. Bracing his feet, he grabbed for his spear—only to realize it wasn't in his hands anymore. The boy's eyes widened in alarm; he must have lost his grip on it while he was rolling along the ground! But where did it get to?

He glanced around frantically, searching the ashes for any sign of his weapon. As if sensing his desperation, the salamander began to move faster.

Finally he spotted it—a droplet of metallic red in a sea of grey and black, gleaming in the magma's light. He swore under his breath; it had to be at least thirty feet away. Could he reach it in time, with the lizard bearing down on him?

He had to take that chance. He broke into a run.

He wasn't fast enough.

Bellowing, the salamander lifted one of its front paws and brought it crashing down; the boy threw himself into another roll, barely managing to avoid getting crushed under the monster's furious stomp. But it wasn't done with him yet; even as he rolled to his feet the giant reptile slammed the other paw down right in his path, and he stumbled, forced to leap over the splayed foot. He landed awkwardly, hissing as he tumbled to the ground—

And before he could do anything else, the first paw came down on him, slamming into his chest with so much force that all breath was driven from his lungs in a single violent burst. He threw his head back and tried to scream, but he couldn't; there was no air, and with the monster's foot pressing down on his chest he couldn't even draw a single breath. His chest was on fire, and he could feel something poking and scraping around in there; something was broken, and he was willing to bet it was his ribs at the very least.

Hissing triumphantly, the salamander slowly turned its head towards him, moving its paw down a little so that his head was exposed. It opened its jaws, saliva dripping from those vicious teeth, the back of its throat aglow with an infernal light.

He greedily sucked in air, wheezing as he tasted blood in his mouth. That must have messed him up really bad. He could see the spear at the very edge of his field of vision, glinting like a red star in the night sky. It was barely ten feet away, maybe less—just out of reach.

The salamander leaned closer, its hot breath washing over his face. He had to do something. If he didn't act fast, the damn lizard was going to take his head clean off…!

He felt something digging into his hip—something hard, cool and metallic. His eyes widened as he realized what it was, and he reached desperately for it. He wrapped his fingers around the hilt, started to pull, tug, yank…yes, it was free! And after a second's struggling, so was the arm that held it.

With as much force as he could muster, Tetsuo brought his knife down on one of the salamander's toes.

The beast yowled in pain, and he stabbed it again, and again, and again and again and again. He grit his teeth, punctuating each stab with a guttural hiss of a word. "Get. Off. Me!"

Finally the monster pulled away, and as soon as its foot was off him he rolled out from under it and clambered awkwardly to his feet, wheezing as he ran towards the spear. Every step he took sent shards of agony grating through his chest, every breath setting his lungs on fire. He could taste blood on his tongue, feel it welling up from somewhere in the back of his throat. He had to finish this fast, or he was dead.

That furious roar split the air again. He could feel the monster's breath washing over his back in a blast of heated air—

He dropped prone, the hairs on the back of his neck standing on end as the salamander's massive jaws snapped shut far too close to them for comfort. He landed on the ground with a grunt, spitting blood, wrapped his hands around the spear and rolled onto his back. He could see that wound in the monster's throat, weeping blood, just within reach, exposed in a way it never would be otherwise due to how the monster's head was twisted.

"For the Primarch!" he hissed, thrusting upward with all his might.

The tip of the spear plunged deep into the salamander's neck, met some kind of resistance for a second, and kept going. The salamander let out a sudden, honking wheeze, like air was escaping from it in two places at once. He allowed himself a weak smile, realizing that he must have punctured its trachea.

Tightening his grip, he twisted the spear this way and that, jerking the adamantium blade at its end left and right. Every movement made the salamander rasp in pain, each one weaker and softer than the last, and his smile grew stronger, knowing that he was killing it. Blood haemorrhaged from the wound, running freely down the spear's shaft to drench his bodyglove and stain it ruddy, scabrous brown. He could see that the monster's legs were starting to tremble, slowly at first, but growing faster and steadily more violent with every passing second. Every beat of the salamander's monstrous heart now brought it closer and closer to death's door, pumping precious life-giving fluids through severed veins and arteries; there was a part of Tetsuo's mind—a small, detached part—that appreciated the irony.

Finally it could take no more, letting out a croaking, rattling hiss, and Tetsuo rolled aside as the monstrous reptile collapsed in a heap, the last of its lifeblood oozing out onto the ashen ground.

He lay there for a long while, staring up into the sky, scarcely able to believe that he was still alive. I've done it, he thought, feeling an odd sense of giddiness. I've done it!

Coughs wracked his body then, staining the inside of his oxygen mask with flecks of his own precious life-giving fluids. His face contorted into a grimace. He'd done it, but it had nearly killed him in the doing. He could tell that he was in a very bad way, the fire in his lungs and the pain in his chest making it abundantly clear that something was very wrong. He needed to get out of here, and fast, or all this would have been for nothing.

Weakly, he fished the beacon from his belt and held it up to the dim light; somehow the tiny, oblong device had emerged unscathed from all this. He pressed the solitary red button which capped its top, and let his arm fall to his side as it began to flash.

Time passed, going by in a strange way. It might have been minutes that he lay there, struggling to breathe and blinking dust from his eyes. It might have been hours. He couldn't say; in his current state, trying to judge the exact passage of time just wasn't worth the effort. Slowly his eyes began to close, their lids growing heavier and heavier with every passing moment; he didn't have the strength to hold them open much longer, and he found he couldn't muster the will to do it either.

The last thing he heard before awareness faded from him was a distant, rising howl, and the last thing he saw before his eyes shut was the boxy, angular shape of a great metal bird of prey swooping across the dark horizon…

* * *

The first thing Tetsuo noticed as awareness slowly returned to him was that the pain was gone. His lungs were no longer on fire; he could breathe freely. His back did not ache. He tasted no blood in his mouth.

The second thing he noticed was that he felt clean. His hair was not heavy and matted with dirt and grime. His hands didn't feel like they were coated with gallons upon gallons of blood. His face was free of sweat and ash, and his eyes did not sting with irritating motes of dust.

Something was draped over him, something coarse but cool to the touch. A blanket, perhaps? He could also feel something under his back, something soft and comforting, like a mattress. Was he in a bed?

Slowly he cracked open his eyes, the world gradually swimming into focus. It was dark, but he could see light—dim, flickering—in the corners of his field of vision. A soft crackling reached his ears in tune to the dance of that orange light. Flames, he realized.

Gradually he realized that he was looking at a ceiling, one heavily shadowed and barely illuminated by the braziers set on either side of his bed.

His brows furrowed in confusion. "Where…am I?" He coughed, his vocal cords feeling as dry as mummified scraps of parchment.

"Prometheus," answered a stern, familiar voice.

Blinking, Tetsuo sat up, the blanket falling away with a soft rustle. His eyes took in only a few brief glimpses of the dimly-lit chamber, but what he could see made his eyes widen with quiet awe. Off in the corner he could make out some kind of a weapons rack, bearing pistols, swords, and all manner of weapons he had never seen before; most of these were hidden in shadow, but the ones he could see filled him with a sense of wonder. Over there he could see a great suit of finely-wrought power armour, emerald with golden trim, its helm bearing a crest of flaring golden wings. He knew that helmet, recognized it from the final battle of the siege of Murosaki…

And there, seated on a bench and dressed only in a green chiton, was the towering, gene-bulked form of an Astartes. Ebony-skinned, heavily-tattooed and ember-eyed, this warrior could only be one of the Salamanders.

The boy's eyebrows rose as he realized who it was. "Captain Sarrukan?"

"Indeed." The Captain of the Salamanders Third Company leaned forward, elbows on his thighs as he rested his chin on his knuckles, his face utterly inscrutable as it came into the light. "Welcome back to the land of the living, Osamu Tetsuo."

The boy hastily bowed as best as he was able. "How…how long was I asleep, my lord?" he asked, keeping his gaze respectfully fixed on the blanket.

"A standard week. You took quite a beating when you faced down that salamander; broken ribs, punctured lungs, a cracked sternum, severe internal bleeding…quite frankly, you're lucky to be alive. Had Chaplain Gore been any later in finding you, you would have died. As it is, the Apothecaries managed to treat your injuries in time."

"I see." So he _had_ come close to death, despite his hard-earned victory…a sobering thought, to say the very least. "Speaking of that," he began hesitantly, "forgive me, my lord, but…how…how did I do?"

Sar'khon did not respond immediately. When he did, his tone was curiously neutral. "The salamander nearly killed you during your trial, Osamu Tetsuo. It was only by virtue of your own skill, mettle and luck that you managed to survive, and even then you would not have walked away from that encounter alive were it not for the Chaplain's timely arrival."

Tetsuo bunched his hands into fists, gripping the sheet tightly. "I see," he said, the words sounding hollow in his throat. So he had failed, then. To have come all this way, endured all the training and the trials that he'd been put through, risking his life in battle against this beast…only to be told that in the end, he just wasn't good enough? His eyes began to sting, and his cheeks burned with shame as he realized that he was on the brink of tears.

"You have done _admirably_."

The boy blinked, and looked up. "…I'm sorry, what?"

The Captain was smiling warmly. "You showed self-reliance in facing down such a terrible beast alone, armed only with a weapon of your own creation and your own skills. Even when faced with a foe far larger and more powerful than you, you did not turn and run; instead you stood your ground, and fought on to what could have been the bitter end. The Salamanders never retreat, and we never give in; even when outnumbered and outgunned, we fight on to the last, even when all our battle-brothers lie dead around us. And we are willing to do whatever it takes to protect the innocent, even if it costs us our lives; for no man who died in His service died in vain."

The boy blinked furiously, his face twitching in disbelief. "Then…you're saying that…that I…?"

"You passed your final trial, Osamu Tetsuo. You have earned your place in our ranks." Sar'khon stood, walked over to the bed, and held out a hand. "Come," he said. "The apothecarion awaits. It is time for you to become a Space Marine."

* * *

**Author's Note:** And so ends part one of Outlander. It's been a wild ride for our protagonist so far, but his tale is only just beginning; where shall he go from here, now that he's succeeded in his goal? Only time will tell.

The story shall resume in two weeks' time, in Part Two: First Action. Tune in in fourteen days as the Salamanders Third Company goes up against a threat far more dangerous than mere feral orks, and Tetsuo gets his first taste of combat with the forces of the Archenemy!


	7. Part II: First Action

**Part II: First Action**

It was pissing rain.

Not that that was anything new, Janek thought with a grimace. It was always pissing rain around these parts. In all the years he'd been living on this miserable little mudball of a planet, he could count the number of days the constant rainfall stopped on one hand. He'd never seen the sun this lousy shithole orbited, not even once; damned cloud cover never lifted.

The guardsman huddled for warmth, his irritable grumbling drowned out by the steady, never-ending pitter-patter of the rainfall on his poncho. It was coming down so heavily he could barely see ten feet ahead; the path he was supposed to be watching was all but invisible, hidden behind the downpour like some tacky set behind a stage curtain. He'd draped a tarp over the autocannon at his side, in a vain attempt to keep it dry; the sheet was supposed to be waterproof, but he was sure the rain was getting through anyway—thanks in no small part to all the little holes something had chewed in it.

"I fucking hate this planet," he muttered, the words lost in the rain.

When the regiment had been awarded the Right of Settlement fifteen years before, most people thought they'd be settling down somewhere a little nicer than the ork-infested dung heaps the Pit Hogs had been wading through for most of the previous decades. They hadn't been asking for much, just a nice, quiet place where they could rest easy and forget about all the stuff they'd seen and done; they'd served the Emperor loyally all their lives, surely they'd earned that small comfort.

Instead, the Pit Hogs had been granted the right to settle Skabb, a planet which somehow managed to be even uglier than its name. Janek had never seen their new home from orbit—he didn't have anywhere near the clearance to be that high up in the decks—but he'd heard from some of the officers who had that it looked like a gangrenous, scabby ball of brown, green and yellow. On making planetfall, they'd discovered that the brown bits consisted of vast muddy plains and quagmires, so deep in places that entire landing craft had been swallowed up without a trace; they'd made sure to stay the hell away from those soon after that first happened. The greens, on the other hand, had been revealed to be thick rainforests and marshes full of savage wildlife with an inexplicable taste for human flesh, and whenever they'd tried to clear out trees to make space the damn things grew back with a vengeance, almost like it was deliberately trying to keep them out. It was only on the yellow blotches that they'd been able to lay down any semblance of permanent civilization, and living there wasn't easy by any stretch of the imagination; the soil was too poor to do any serious kind of agriculture, and there were lakes of salt home to vast colonies of buzzing, biting gnats—though fortunately even they couldn't tolerate the rain when it got particularly heavy, as it was now.

Needless to say, the men of the regiment had had quite a few complaints for the lord general—but he had brushed off their concerns, telling them that as loyal servants of the Emperor they should be honoured to be rewarded in such a manner, no matter what form that reward was in. After all, as brave soldiers who'd faced down greenskins across a dozen worlds even uglier than this, a few biting flies should be trivial in comparison.

Needless to say, he'd been found strung up from a steeple atop the local basilica by the end of the week.

"Janek!" a voice called, interrupting his train of thought.

Janek glanced in that direction, a scowl already forming on his lips. Even over the pounding rain, he recognized that voice all too well.

Sure enough, he could see a dark shape approaching from the other side of the autocannon, a shape that gradually resolved into the strapping form of Gregor Anselm. Janek did not like Gegor all that much; the man was a damned idiot, as far as he was concerned. Right now the man was walking up to him with his poncho thrown back and his jacket hanging open, leaving a torso that invariably left more than a few ladies swooning whenever he hit the pub exposed to the elements and leaving the tattoos carved into his flesh proudly on display.

Janek's eyes narrowed. "Piss off, Gregor."

"Can't do that, I'm afraid," the other man said, an easy smile on his face despite the shivers wracking him from the cold. "Time to change shifts."

"Already? Please." The guardsman lifted up his arm and pulled back his sleeve, squinting in an effort to make out the numbers on his chronometer. "Yeah, see? You're not due to take over for another half-hour! Piss off and leave me be."

Still smiling, Gregor held up his hands like he was trying to calm a spoiled child. It was a gesture Janek particularly loathed. "Now, now, is that any way to talk to your big brother? There's no need to get up in arms, Janek; I was just getting lonely and bored in the shack, so I figured I'd come out early for a chat."

"Well, we've chatted. Now piss off."

Gregor sighed, eyebrows rising in a way that made the eight-spoked wheel tattooed across his forehead impossible to ignore. "Honestly, what's gotten into you tonight? You aren't usually this testy, little brother."

"What's gotten into me?" Janek let out a short, humourless laugh. "Did you miss the memo this morning, Gregor? Didn't you hear the reports from the front lines? The Angels of Death are here; the Space Marines fight alongside the loyalists!"

Gregor's body shook with stifled laughter. "Oh, Janek," he chuckled. "That's what you're worried about? The front lines are dozens of miles from here; we'll know the Space Marines are coming long before they actually get here, and when we do, we'll be ready for 'em." He patted the autocannon, as if to prove his point.

Janek's grimace only deepened. "I've heard stories about what they can do, Gregor. They say the Angels of Death can spit acid, that they can see perfectly in the dark. I've heard they can take enough punishment to kill a man a hundred times over before they die, and that they can keep fighting even with no arms or legs."

"Please," Gregor snorted. "It's all propaganda, little brother. If the Space Marines can do even half the things people say they can do, why would the Imperium need people like us to protect it? They could wipe out every last xeno in the whole damn galaxy if they were that good." He smiled, and jerked a thumb over his shoulder. "And even if they were that good, don't forget we've got something better waiting for 'em back at the base."

That was true, Janek had to admit, glancing through the rain towards the distant form of the main basecamp. It was almost time for the midnight mass; he imagined that Lord Shemyaza and his acolytes were rousing the faithful from their slumber even now, herding them towards the black altar he'd erected in the heart of the little shanty town. Even from this distance, he fancied he could make out the pounding beat of the ceremonial drums over the rain.

It had been seven years into their stay on Skabb that Shemyaza had first appeared before the Pit Hogs. Calling himself an apostle of the dark powers, he'd offered to save them from their squalid lives in return for their allegiance—not merely to him, but to the dread pantheon he served. After more than half a decade of living on this filthy, bug-infested world with nothing but empty promises from the priests of the Ecclesiarchy, the people of Skabb had been ready for a change, and were all too willing to accept his benediction.

And so, they had come to embrace the powers of Chaos—and the planet had fallen under the rule of the Word Bearers.

Of course, not everyone had been willing to accept his gracious offer. Some had resisted overtly in the first year or two, particularly the priests who'd once preached in the Corpse-Emperor's name, but they'd all been hunted down, dragged out into the street and given very painful and public executions to serve as an example of what would happen to anyone else who defied the Bearers of the Word. It hadn't worked, though, or at least not as well as Shemyaza might have intended; all it had done was convince the surviving nonbelievers to go to ground, bide their time and rebuild their numbers, spreading insidiously through the population like a cancer.

It hadn't been until two or three months ago that the loyalists finally came out of hiding, leading a blitzkrieg attack on the planetary capital while Shemyaza and his servants were away. They'd seized control of the city after a short and bloody battle, and had held onto it for a week before the Word Bearers' return forced them to retreat; he'd even heard that they'd somehow forced the city's astropath to send out a distress call.

And obviously, that distress call had gotten through. The fact that Space Marines had arrived to support the loyalist dogs was proof enough of that.

"Cheer up, brother." Gregor leaned over the autocannon, still grinning, and placed a hand on Janek's shoulder. "So they've got Space Marines on their side; we've got the blessings of the Dark Gods on ours."

Janek nodded, albeit begrudgingly. Much as he hated to admit it, the idiot had a point for once. "But will that be enough?"

Gregor rolled his eyes. "Always the pessimist, aren't you?"

"Somebody has to be," Janek shot back. "Faith in the Chaos Gods won't win this in and of itself, you know."

He was about to say something else, but the words died unspoken as he noticed something. "Hey…what's that?" he asked, pointing at something past his brother's shoulder.

Gregor turned, frowning as his gaze fell on a large, misshapen lump next to the farthest visible sandbags, perhaps fifteen feet from where he stood. "Looks like a clump of mud, to me."

"Was it there when you came out? Because I don't think it was there when I started my shift a few hours ago…"

The bigger man shrugged. "Might have been. I didn't notice, in all honesty."

Janek frowned. "What do you mean, you didn't notice? We're on guard duty, you nitwit! We're supposed to be paying attention to this kind of thing!"

"Janek, you worry _way_ too much." Gregor turned to face him, that easy smile in place once more, shifting to block his view of whatever that thing was. "One of these days, you're going to give yourself an ulcer. Everything's fine; the Space Marines are nowhere near here, and everything is perfectly under—"

What happened next seemed to transpire in horrific slow-motion. Something brown and amorphous rose up right behind Gregor, something even larger and broader than he was. An arm emerged from that mass, covered in dark green fatigues and matching plates of carapace armour, its gloved hand clapping over Gregor's mouth and jerking his head back. Janek's brother had just enough time for his eyes to go wide in surprise and let out a muffled cry before a second arm emerged from that mass to draw a massive knife across his throat.

Janek stared wide-eyed, blinking by reflex as his brother's blood sprayed across his face. All that had taken place in less than a second, and he was only just beginning to react; he backpedalled away, jaw working soundlessly, fumbling for his lasgun—

He bumped into something, and before he could even begin to turn around and see what it was a pair of massive hands grabbed him by the chin and temple. He had just enough time to whisper "Please—" before his attacker gave his head a sickeningly powerful wrench, snapping his neck.

The last thing Janek saw, as his attacker let him go and the world started to go dark, was the form of what had killed his brother—a cloaked giant in green carapace armour, its eyes hidden behind the phosphorescent lenses of a pair of night vision goggles, its face black as coal and utterly devoid of sympathy…

Then he hit the ground, and Janek Anselm knew no more.

* * *

Osamu Tetsuo watched the life fade from the traitor guardsman's eyes, then glanced down at the man whose throat he'd just cut. The two renegades couldn't have been more different, he noticed; his own victim's body was utterly festooned with ritual carvings and tattoos, the blasphemous marks of devotion making the Space Marine's lips curl in distaste. The other, by contrast, had no visible marks to speak of, and was more sensibly-dressed for the weather; perhaps his devotion to the vile heresies which had claimed this world was not as strong as his compatriots. Had this man been having second thoughts about those he served? Could he have been redeemed?

A scowl came to Tetsuo's face, and he crushed that thought before it could go any further. Such speculation was pointless. Whatever the reasons, these men had turned from the Emperor's light and thrown their lot in with the Dark Powers; now they were simply paying the price for their treason and heresy.

He shot a glance at Balthazar, who was looking down at his own victim with complete and utter scorn; catching his eye, the two Salamanders shared a nod. Tetsuo reached up and pressed a hand to the headset over his right ear. "Sentries neutralized," he whispered into the mouthpiece. "Checkpoint cleared."

The voice of Sergeant Adrian ghosted through his ear, rasping and soft. "Acknowledged; excellent work. Move up, Scouts; maintain camouflage."

No sooner had these orders been given than three figures emerged from the treeline on either side of the path; like Tetsuo and Balthazar, they wore cameleoline cloaks over their scout armour, the hoods drawn up to keep the rain out of their eyes.

Sergeant Adrian approached the autocannon and threw off the tarp covering it, studying the gun with narrowed eyes. Such a weapon had enough firepower to halt the Salamanders' advance, once they reached this point; its powerful anti-tank shells could punch through ceramite with ease, pulverizing Space Marines in droves. It could not be allowed to remain intact, on the off-chance that the traitor guardsmen sent someone to investigate.

Without a word, the sergeant placed one hand atop the autocannon's barrel and the other hand below it, several feet away. With a grunt he pushed with one hand and pulled with the other, and the barrel gave a tortured groan as he bent it ninety degrees like a cheap straw. "Artillery neutralized," he rasped, his words carrying easily over the downpour despite how softly they'd been spoken. "_Now_ the checkpoint is clear." He swept his orange gaze across the assembled initiates. "Never leave behind anything the enemy could use against you or your battle-brothers. Remember that, Scouts."

Tetsuo nodded, as did Balthazar, Ignatius and Krowe. Sergeant Adrian was a man of few words, save when it came to dispensing lessons like this; whenever he bothered to speak in complete sentences, it was wise to pay attention and commit his words to memory.

The corner of the Sergeant's lips turned upwards in the barest hint of a smile; evidently he was pleased. Then it vanished as quickly as it had first appeared. "Ignatius, Krowe; take point. Next checkpoint is yours. Osamu, Balthazar; in the middle. Watch for attacks from the sides. I have the rear. Advance on my mark."

The four initiates nodded once again, and quickly moved to take up their assigned positions. Sergeant Adrian gave the signal a moment later, and without another word the squad melted back into the underbrush and continued on its way, their camo-cloaks changing colour to render them all but invisible amidst the dense foliage. Ignatius and Krowe led the way, their Astartes-pattern shotguns sweeping back and forth in search of targets; several metres behind them came Tetsuo and Balthazar, keeping a sharp eye out for enemy presences through the scopes of their Stalker-pattern bolters. Adrian brought up the rear, his sniper rifle slung across his back, bolt pistol and chainsword in hand.

This was the third checkpoint the Scouts of Squad Adrian had cleared out in the last hour and a half, and the most lightly-defended thereof. That didn't surprise Tetsuo all that much; with the rest of the Salamanders Third Company locked in combat with the renegade guardsmen and the Traitor Legions who led them several dozen miles to the west, it made sense that the enemy commander would want his defences to be strongest closest to the actual fighting.

Captain Sar'khon had predicted that the traitors would do something like that, and so he'd dispatched several squads of Scouts to make their way behind enemy lines to gather intelligence, sabotage defences, and otherwise sow panic and destruction amongst their forces. Squad Adrian had not made contact with any of these other squads since first entering the jungle some three hours before, so as not to draw attention to themselves and their allies in case the traitors could eavesdrop on their vox-frequencies. Given that none of the sentries they'd come across had been at all prepared for them, Tetsuo could only hope the others hadn't been discovered.

The rough, gravelly voice of Balthazar sounded in Tetsuo's ear, cutting off his train of thought. "I must say, brother, you'd have made a fine member of the Raven Guard."

"And why is that?" Tetsuo asked, keeping his eyes on the surrounding terrain where they belonged.

"Your stealth skills are simply impeccable, Outlander." A hint of amusement crept into the other Salamander's tone. "You're so good at being hidden that even when people notice you, they don't notice you. It's like their minds refuse to acknowledge your presence."

Tetsuo rolled his eyes. "Honestly, 'Outlander'? We've known each other for ten years now, Balthazar; when are you going to stop calling me that?"

"Now that's a good question," Balthazar said in feigned consideration. "Unfortunately—"

Sergeant Adrian cut him off before he could finish whatever he was about to say. "Osamu, Balthazar; maintain radio silence. This is enemy territory; be vigilant, and be quiet."

Suitably chastened, the two scouts promptly fell silent. Adrian was right, of course; this was neither the time nor the place to be engaging in that sort of idle chatter. Light though the defences had been thus far, the squad was still deep in enemy territory, and if the traitors _did_ have some means of eavesdropping, a conversation like that was all it would take to give away their position. Stealth was critical at this point; the Scouts simply could not afford to get roped into a drawn-out gunfight with whatever forces the traitors might send out to investigate an errant vox-signal. The gunfire would draw too much attention to themselves, and if they were to accomplish their objective, they had to reach the enemy's compound without raising an alarm.

They were not here just to inconvenience the heretics, as the other squads were. Captain Sar'khon had given Squad Adrian a crucially important task to complete, one that could only be entrusted to the best marksman in the Third Company, and their success here could end the battle for Skabb in a single stroke.

He had tasked them with infiltrating the enemy's headquarters and eliminating the Dark Apostle that led them.

As they made their way deeper into the jungle, Tetsuo could only shake his head. That was one hell of an objective for his first deployment.

* * *

Bal Zadron, Coryphaus of the hundred-and-eighth host—what was left of it, at any rate—stalked the halls of his improvised command center, pacing back and forth like a caged lion. The mortals gave him a wide berth, looking upon him with fear—and well they should, for his mood was so foul he'd have flayed the flesh from the bones of any fool stupid enough to approach him without a moment's thought or hesitation. How much of that was born of his own frustration, and how much of it was a product of the eternal bloodlust of the daemon bound within his breast, was something he neither knew nor cared.

It did not please him to be confined here, so far from the front lines. Bal Zadron was as pious as any Bearer of the Word, as devoted to the Dark Gods and their universal truth as only the sons of Lorgar could be; but he was no preacher, no minister. He was a warrior, through and through, and his place was in the heat of battle; he longed to be out there, tearing the insubordinate insurgents and the Loyalists who'd come to support them limb from limb, tasting the blood of Astartes on his tongue. As leader of the host's military affairs, that was where he belonged.

But Shemyaza, in his 'infinite' wisdom, had ordered him to remain here. The Dark Apostle had communed with the gods the day before, and they had granted him a vision in which Bal Zadron could best serve the host by coordinating the defence from the command center.

Of course, that vision had entirely failed to predict the arrival of Vulkan's bastard whelps. Much as Shemyaza had failed to predict the series of embarrassing reversals of fortune which had seen the hundred-and-eighth host decimated and their surviving forces spat out of the Warp here, on this rancid little mud ball of a planet.

Suffice it to say, for someone who styled himself as the 'Eternal Watcher of the Ten Thousand Futures', Shemyaza's predictions left something to be desired.

The Coryphaus' lips peeled back in a snarl, revealing a mouth full of serrated, shark-like teeth to a slave who happened to be passing by, scaring the girl out of her wits and sending her running in a panic. Bal Zadron watched her go, resisting the urge to give chase and wring the life from the wretch in a suitably agonizing fashion; that was the daemon talking, for the most part. It was getting harder and harder to rein himself in, though; he didn't appreciate being cooped up here, and neither did the fiend that was his passenger. He needed to find something to do, and soon, or he might end up slaughtering his command staff in an effort to sate his bloodlust.

He made his way to the communications centre, a dimly-lit little room where several of the less-advanced cultists were sitting around a cogitator, looking utterly bored as they monitored the vox-traffic. Or at least, they'd looked that way until he entered the room; then they looked utterly terrified, a change he found more than acceptable.

"Gentlemen," he said, the word leaving his mouth in two voices; one was low, masculine and dignified, while the other was braying and harsh like the bark of a rabid dog. "I want a status report, and I want it now. Have the checkpoints spotted any unusual activity?"

"N-n-not as f-f-far as w-we know, s-sir," stammered one.

Bal Zadron turned his gaze on the man who'd spoken, his eyes narrowing behind his silver face mask. "Not as far as you know?" he echoed, one of his voices stern with displeasure, the other hissing as if in relish.

The cultist's mouth worked soundlessly. To the Coryphaus, he looked like a fish gasping for air after beaching itself.

"This is not a complicated question, acolyte," he said. "Either they have, or they haven't. Which is it, then?"

Still the cultist didn't answer.

Bal Zadron let out a sigh. To think that Shemyaza intended to replenish the hundred-and-eighth's ranks with the best of these wretches…

With deliberate slowness he lifted an arm, reaching for the cultist. Red ceramite flowed and rippled like water, morphing and mutating through a thousand different forms in the time it took to blink; fingers ran like hot wax, melting together into a single unbroken mass. When the changes finally stopped, everything below the elbow had become a massive crustacean claw made of ruddy flesh-metal.

The Coryphaus took the cultist's neck between the tips of his pincers, applying just enough pressure to break the skin and nothing more. "I shall ask one final time," he said, his twin voices deceptively calm. "Have the checkpoints spotted anything unusual?"

"N-no, s-s-sir." The cultist swallowed audibly. "A-at l-l-l-least, n-n-n-not the ones that h-have ch-che-checked in. Th-the vox h-has b-been s-spotty all n-ni-night."

Bal Zadron smiled, and the silver face mask he wore mirrored his expression. "There, was that so difficult?"

His claw snapped shut with a sound like pruning shears closing, and the other people in the room gasped and drew back as the cultist's head toppled from his shoulders.

"This is the price of incompetence," Bal Zadron went on, the pincer morphing back into his normal hand as he spoke. "The Dark Gods do not look kindly upon fools. Now then, I believe this man said something about the vox being spotty? Don't you think you should be doing something about that?"

The other cultists immediately crowded around the cogitator, getting to work at an almost frantic pace. Bal Zadron watched them, feeling a sudden urge to let out a sigh. How had it come to this? He was a veteran of the Long War, a survivor of the Horus Heresy. He'd been there on the killing fields of Isstvan V, thousands of years ago; he'd been one of the first Vakrah Jal, learning at the feet of the great Argel Tal; he'd butchered the sons of Guilliman alongside Angron's rabid dogs during the Shadow Crusade, in the streets of Armatura and on the flooded plains of Nuceria; and he'd been there on Terra, in the final battle. Once entire companies of the XVII Legion had been his to command, and entire worlds had trembled with fear at the mere mention of his name; now he was stuck here on this festering cesspit, with barely a hundred Bearers of the Word at his beck and call, forced to obey the commands of a Dark Apostle whose tactical acumen and prescience were questionable at best.

What had he done to deserve this?

"Err, my lord?"

The Word Bearer turned his gaze upon the cultist who'd spoken up, eyes narrowed. "What is it, whelp? If you think it's important enough to warrant my attention, spit it out."

The cultist quavered, but went on. "Forgive me, my lord, but I've noticed a strange pattern here; we're slowly managing to restore vox-contact with most of the checkpoints…except the ones along Route Seven. We can't raise any of them, sir."

Bal Zadron leaned forward. "There are ten checkpoints along Route Seven." It was a statement, not a question; he'd overseen their placement personally.

"Y-yes, my lord."

"And you can't raise any of them at all?"

"N-no, my lord."

The Coryphaus fell silent, eyes narrowing. It could just be that those checkpoints were having a particularly tough time with the rain…but he had not survived these last eight thousand years by writing things off as coincidences, especially not where fellow Astartes were concerned.

"Send a scouting party out to the nearest one," he said at length. "I want to know what's going on out there."

* * *

The squad had been marching alongside the road for an hour when Ignatius suddenly came to a halt, holding up a hand. "Movement ahead."

No sooner had he said these words than Tetsuo detected a faint sound over the pounding rain. Frowning, he used his Lyman's Ear to filter out the ambient noise of the downpour and enhance what was left. It sounded like rain beating a staccato rhythm on a metal surface, mixed with the throaty rumbling of a motor of some kind and the regular hiss of moving hydraulics…

"Hold position, Scouts," said Adrian. "Maximum stealth."

The four Salamanders instantly obeyed, dropping low to the ground so that their cameleoline cloaks could offer the best possible concealment. Tetsuo had positioned himself so that he could see the road through the foliage, ready to bring up his bolter if the need should arise.

The sounds grew louder with every passing second, their source drawing nearer; the Scouts of Squad Adrian tensed, waiting to see what it was. After half a minute it strode into view—a Sentinel, Mars-pattern if Tetsuo wasn't mistaken, its open top covered by a tarp to keep its driver out of the rain and its hull daubed with foul sigils and blasphemous runes that made his stomach turn. Ten men clad in water-proof ponchos hurried along in its wake, almost like a brood of ducklings following their mother…a brood of ducklings armed with lasguns.

Squad Adrian waited until the walker and its escorts were out of sight, at which point the sergeant turned to address the others. "Scouting party," he explained, his tone grim.

Tetsuo grimaced. "They must be investigating why nobody's checked in."

"Which means we don't have a lot of time before they figure out we're in the area," Krowe added.

The five Salamanders traded grim looks. Once that happened, completing their mission—let alone getting out of here alive—would become far more difficult.

Sergeant Adrian was the first to stand up. "I have point. Move up, squad; double time."

The four initiates nodded, and no sooner had they all gotten to their feet than they were off, moving through the jungle at a much faster pace.

* * *

Dozens of miles to the west, the city of Pol's Landing burned. The streets echoed with the chatter of gunfire and the roar of explosions, drowning out the incessant pounding of the rain, and pillars of smoke rose into the sky from buildings ablaze with the fires of promethium, the chemical flames barely inconvenienced by the heavy downpour.

Chaplain Gore paced behind a hastily-erected barricade at one end of a broad thoroughfare, bolt pistol in one hand and crozius arcanum in the other. Two dozen guerillas manned the barricade in front of him, firing their lasguns into the dust and smoke which obscured the far end of the street. Sickly green beams of coherent light lanced out of the smoke in opposition to the guerillas' crimson lasers, painting the cracked and pitted road in a kaleidoscope of deadly hues.

"Do not relent," he proclaimed, his voice projected through the external speakers of his skull-faced helmet. "Your salvation is at hand, sons of Skabb; your loyalty to the God-Emperor has been rewarded."

One of the defenders cried out as a las-bolt struck him in the shoulder, flinging him back to land in a heap. Gore was at his side in a flash, helping the man back to his feet. "Are you alright?"

The guerilla nodded, his face pale. "I'm fine, my lord," he answered breathlessly. "Just a scratch; the armour took most of it."

"Good." The Chaplain picked up the man's lasgun from where it had fallen and held it out. "Keep at it, soldier."

He turned away once the guerilla had reclaimed his weapon and taken his place in the firing line, and began to pace one more. "The enemy fights desperately, my children. Do you know why? Because he knows that his doom is at hand. He knows that the hour of retribution is upon him, and he seeks to escape judgment at the Emperor's hands. Will you allow this?"

"No, my lord!" the defenders cried.

"After seven years of being forced to hide and conceal your faith, will you let this opportunity go to waste? Will you allow the heretics and the traitors to escape justice for what they've done?"

"No, my lord!"

"The eyes of the Emperor are upon you, sons and daughters of Skabb; will you let yourselves be found wanting?!"

"No, my lord!"

The volume of incoming fire began to diminish abruptly. Gore knew what that meant, and he pointed towards the far end of the thoroughfare. "The heretics prepare to charge," he boomed, "as they have done five times before. And as we have done five times already, we will drive them back! Not a single damned soul shall reach this position, do you hear me!"

The defenders shouted back in unison. "Yes, my lord!"

A great shout rose up from the far end of the street as if to challenge the guerillas' vow, and the volleys of tainted las-fire resumed as dozens of traitor guardsmen came charging out of the smoke. The defenders responded in kind, their scarlet shots flaring brightly in the haze; some shots went wild but many more found their marks, pitching renegades from their feet in droves as limbs were blown off and heads were atomized. Dozens of them died in the first seconds of the exchange, the traitors foolishly ignoring the ample cover offered by the debris which littered the street and paying the price for their suicidal overconfidence.

Still, what the renegades lacked in common sense and self-preservation they made up for with sheer numbers; every time a traitor guard went down two more charged into the killing field to take his place, shouting obscene prayers to the Ruinous Powers as they fired wildly.

Gore's eyes narrowed as he watched the carnage. He'd been on this street for an hour and a half, bolstering the resolve of the guerillas as they held the line. The fighting had been bloody indeed, for the heretics were determined to break through the barricade and the defenders were just as determined to not let that happen. It was imperative that the Chaos forces not be allowed to advance down this thoroughfare; it led straight to the Third Company's main landing zone in the eastern districts of Pol's Landing, offering an easy avenue of attack if left unguarded.

All throughout the city similar engagements were taking place, Salamanders and loyalist guerillas locked in frenzied shootouts with the treasonous Pit Hogs and their Word Bearer allies as they struggled for control of Pol's Landing. The Chaplain's grip tightened around the haft of his crozius, his hand trembling with righteous fury. Word Bearers…of all the foul Traitor Legions, they were by far the most detestable. He longed to be out there with his brothers where the fighting was heaviest, to unleash the Emperor's wrath upon these heathen warrior-priests; they deserved to die a thousand times over for all their Legion had done over the millennia—all the worlds they'd destroyed, all the seeds of evil they'd sewn, all the innocent populations they'd swayed from the Emperor's light and converted to their debased, unholy faith…

Captain Sar'khon had ordered him to hold this position, and that was exactly what Gore intended to do. Even so, the assignment rankled; in all the time he'd been here the Chaplain had yet to fire a single shot, and yet to even see a single traitor legionary.

The guerillas had the situation well in hand, their disciplined volleys steadily thinning the traitor's ranks until only a handful remained. Was there nothing here to offer him a decent challenge?

That was when he heard it—a slow, dolorous drumbeat echoing down the street from somewhere off in the smoke, accompanied by monotonous chanting in a harsh, grating tongue that filled him with revulsion. Twelve silhouettes appeared in the haze, advancing slowly in stark contrast to the traitor guard's frenzied and suicidal charge, marching in a disciplined line where the cultists had been an unruly mob.

Gore stopped pacing, turning to face these newcomers.

They emerged from the smoke, a dozen giants clad in debased armour of an ancient design. Scraps of parchment clung to their crimson battleplate, blackened from fire and soaked from the rain. Jagged spikes rimmed their pauldrons, on which skinned human faces had been hooked and pulled taut into masks of agony. Foul runes that seemed to twist and writhe under their own power were etched across their greaves and breastplates, the sight of them filling Gore's mouth with the taste of bile. Massive horns rose from the temples of their helmets, the slanted eyepieces and oblong mouth-grille making them resemble daemons grimacing with rage. In their hands they carried boltguns, the weapons' ammunition dangling from the open magazine slots, their casings corroded and inscribed with the eight-pointed star of Chaos.

The guerillas had stopped firing, transfixed by the sight of the Word Bearers. "The enemy is before you!" Gore bellowed. "Strike them down in the Emperor's name!"

Shaken out of their collective trance by his words, the defenders brought up their lasguns and began to fire—but whereas their shots had been lethally effective against the cultists, the deadly beams of scarlet light merely glanced off the traitor legionaries' crimson armour, leaving burn marks and little else.

The Word Bearers simply stood there, enduring this assault like it was nothing more than the buzzing of a cloud of gnats. Then, with deliberate slowness, they brought up their accursed bolters and took aim.

"Concentrate fire! Bring them down one at a time!" Gore leapt over the barricade, the power field of his crozius crackling to life as he charged the traitors. "The Emperor protects!"

"The Emperor protects!" the defenders shouted back, before the street was engulfed by the hiss of lasbeams and the kicking roar of bolter fire.

* * *

**Author's Note:** And with that, ladies and gentlemen, we are back to your regularly-scheduled programming. For those of you wondering what may have happened during the ten years between the end of Part I and the start of Part II, have no fear; these things shall be revealed in time.

Will Tetsuo and the other members of Squad Adrian be able to complete their mission? Will Chaplain Gore survive his encounter with an entire squad of Word Bearers? Will this Bal Zadron be taking a more active role? Find out next week as the Battle for Skabb continues!

Also, be advised that the story's rating will likely be bumped up to M with the next installment-things will soon get quite bloody, in true 40k fashion.


	8. Vakrah Jal

**Notice: **The rating of the story has been bumped up to M as of this chapter, due to some rather graphic violence and gore. Also, this chapter contains some small references to the plot of the Horus Heresy book _Betrayer_, by Aaron Dembski-Bowden; if you want to avoid mild spoilers about the fate of a certain character from that book, then read on at your own risk.

* * *

**Vakrah Jal**

It had taken Squad Adrian another half-hour to reach the Word Bearers' compound. Lying flat beneath some ferns at the edge of the surrounding treeline, Tetsuo studied the situation through the scope of his Stalker bolter.

He had to hand it to the traitors; lax as their security had been at the checkpoints, the compound was another matter entirely. High walls of sheer ferrocrete surrounded the installation on all sides, dotted with guard towers at regular intervals and sentries patrolling the ramparts. There was only one visible gate on this side of the fortress, a massive slab of adamantium that only opened when there were troops and vehicles coming in and out; otherwise, as now, the gates remained shut. It was flanked on either side by a pair of Tarantula sentry guns, the automated turrets tracking slowly back and forth in search of potential targets. He was willing to bet that any other entrances were similarly defended.

The initiate narrowed his eyes grimly. Getting in would not be easy.

He retreated into the undergrowth, making his way back to where the rest of the squad was waiting, and relayed his findings to the assembled Scouts in hushed tones. "How should we do this, Sergeant?" he asked when he was done.

Sergeant Adrian brought a hand up to his chin, scratching the stubble in contemplation. "Two options," he said at length. "Scale the walls; or hitch a ride on an enemy vehicle. Both are risky; careful timing will be needed." The veteran's brows beetled, and he shook his head. "No. Forget the second option; not as feasible. It relies too much on chance and time—time we do not have. We scale the walls."

The five Salamanders made their way to the treeline, choosing a spot halfway between the gate Tetsuo had been watching and the next so that they would not be in the Tarantulas' field of fire. Mag-clamping his bolt pistol and chainsword to his hips, Adrian dropped to one knee and unslung his sniper rifle.

"Tetsuo, you're up first," he whispered, bringing up the rifle to take aim at the top of the ramparts. "When I give the word, run for the wall at full speed; hold position once you reach the base. Understood?"

"Yes, Sergeant."

Adrian nodded. "We will only scale the wall once the entire squad is in position. Is that clear, squad?"

"Yes, Sergeant," four voices whispered in unison.

"Good." The sergeant fell silent then, slowly panning his rifle from one side to the other as he tracked the movements of the sentries. "The wall will be clear in a few seconds. Get ready, Tetsuo."

At these words Tetsuo rose into a half-crouch, holding his bolter close to his chest. He took a deep breath, tensing in preparation.

"Go."

The Scout took off like a shot, tearing across the open grounds between the jungle and the base of the wall. He ran low to minimize the odds of being seen, his blood pounding in his ears as his second heart kicked in to fuel his sprint. Even now, ten years after the organ had first gone into his chest, the sound of two distinct heartbeats occasionally threw him for a loop.

The Word Bearers and their Pit Hog lackeys had cleared out a good forty metres of jungle around their base, to give themselves a clear view of their immediate surroundings and spot any potential intruders from a long way off. He crossed that distance in a blur, reaching the base of the wall in just over ten seconds. As soon as he was in position, Tetsuo dropped to the ground and pressed himself up against the wall, the fibres of his cameleoline cloak shifting to take on the colour and texture of the surrounding ferrocrete.

There he lay, his twin pulses dropping to normal levels and his breath rate calming as he waited for his battle-brothers to follow him. It was almost half a minute before Krowe joined him; then came Balthazar, twenty seconds later; Ignatius another minute after that; and finally Sergeant Adrian. All told, it had taken the squad a little under three minutes to get into position.

Once they were all gathered in the shadow of the compound walls, Tetsuo glanced at Adrian. "With your permission, Sergeant, I'd like to go first."

A nod was the extent of Adrian's response.

Satisfied, Tetsuo stood up, backed away from the wall and turned to face the sheer expanse of ferrocrete. Craning his neck back until he could just barely see the top of the ramparts twenty metres above, the Scout slung his boltgun and drew a grapnel launcher from its place at his hip. He narrowed his eyes, taking careful aim to compensate for the rain drops spattering against the lenses of his goggles, and pulled the trigger.

A spiked length of cable shot from the gun's barrel, hurtling high into the air; with his Lyman's Ear, he could just make out the sound of the grappling hook clattering against something far above. No sooner had he heard this than the cable immediately began to retract, pulling taut a moment later when the grapnel caught on something. Tetsuo gave it a few tugs to make sure the line was secure, then clamped the launcher back into place at his hip, drew his combat knife and held it with his teeth, and finally took the rope in both hands and began to climb.

* * *

One of the cultists looked up at Bal Zadron, a hand pressed against his headset. "My lord, the scouting party has reached the first checkpoint." He paused, listening as they continued their report, his face turning pale. "They say…they say the men stationed there are all dead."

The Coryphaus leaned forward, letting out a deep rumble of displeasure. "How were they killed?"

The cultist took a moment to relay his question to the search party. "One man had his neck snapped, the other had his throat cut. They haven't found any signs of a struggle."

Bal Zadron narrowed is eyes. So the sentries had been taken by surprise, killed before they even realized they were in danger. He was willing to bet that the crews of the other checkpoints along Route Seven had suffered similar fates.

"And one more thing, sir," the cultist went on. "The autocannon these men were manning…the search party says its barrel has been bent."

The lips of the Word Bearer's silver face mask peeled back in a snarl, exposing his serrated teeth. Ordinary humans didn't have the strength to bend the barrel of a weapon like that, and any machinery capable of doing so would have left some trace for the scouting party to find. It had not been mortals that had done this; there was only one thing that had the brute force needed to inflict such damage, and the skill to commit such stealthy, cowardly acts of murder.

Its name left his lips in a bestial growl. "Space Marine Scouts…"

The vox-operator blanched, as did everyone else in the room. "The…the Astartes are coming here, my lord?" one stammered.

"If they aren't here yet, they soon will be." The Coryphaus curled his massive hands into fists, bony spurs sprouting suddenly from his knuckles as the daemon within his breast grew restless. "Sound the alarm," he ordered. "Put all forces on alert."

* * *

Tetsuo cautiously peered over the crenellations, taking in his immediate surroundings at a glance. Beyond the parapet was a broad walkway that followed the gentle curvature of the wall. There was a guard tower some four metres to his left, and another one eight metres to the right; a sentry had just stepped into the latter, shutting the door behind them. Apart from that, the walkway was completely devoid of life.

The young Space Marine allowed himself a faint sigh of relief. So far, so good…

He had just finished hauling himself over the edge of the wall when shrill klaxons suddenly began to blare throughout the compound.

He froze for a second, then uttered a particularly vulgar Seiryuuan oath. There was no place for him to hide, no place where his camo-cloak could possibly make him look inconspicuous. With his Lyman's Ear he could make out the sounds of a commotion coming from both of the towers, the sentries inside thrown into disarray by the sudden alarm; spotlights came to life atop these fortifications, sweeping beams of blindingly bright light across the grounds below. Those lights wouldn't be able to find the rest of Squad Adrian, huddling at the very base of the wall, but even so he knew that the mission was compromised.

He heard movement from within the nearest guard tower; the heretics inside were moving in his general direction.

Hurriedly unhooking his grapnel from the crenel it had caught on, Tetsuo rushed to the wall of that tower and pressed himself as flat against it as possible next to the door. It swung open mere seconds later, a team of three traitor guardsmen still in the middle of hastily donning their ponchos as they rushed out into the rain.

He lunged after the last man, catching up to him before his victim had taken more than half a dozen steps. Tetsuo brought an arm up at blinding speed to grab the man by the back of his neck, snapping it like a dry twig with a single efficient twist of his wrist, and with as much effort as an ordinary man tossing aside a sack of flour he threw the lifeless renegade over the parapets.

His other hand was bringing up the grapnel launcher even as he broke the first guardsman's neck, and as he tossed his victim off the wall he took aim at the back of the second man's head and fired. The man had just begun to turn around, alerted by the faint crunch of snapping bones, when the grappling hook struck, punching through one temple and blowing out the other to shower the third man in a burst of blood, bone fragments and brain matter.

The third man had turned around just in time to catch this in the face, and was still in the process of staring at the ruined skull of his comrade in mute horror when Tetsuo hurled his combat knife at him, nailing the traitor right between the eyes. He dropped like a stone, a look of bafflement frozen on his face.

The entire struggle was over in four seconds.

Tetsuo glanced at the far tower. Nobody had come out of there yet, but that could change all too quickly.

After taking a moment to pull the grapnel and knife free of his victims' heads, grimacing as he did so, he glanced over the parapet. "Wall is clear, Sergeant," he called, not bothering to raise his voice as he knew they would easily be able to hear him. "For now, at least. I recommend joining me with all haste."

* * *

Bal Zadron's head snapped up, turning towards the southwest perimeter as an all-too-familiar scent reached his nostrils. Blood had just been shed, and not in any sort of ritual or sacrifice.

He bared his teeth with a growl. "They are here."

Every cultist in the room froze, staring at him with stunned disbelief.

The Coryphaus ignored them, striding purposefully out of the communications center. A handful of Astartes Scouts would not offer much in the way of challenge, young and inexperienced as they were; but given his situation, he'd take what satisfaction he could get.

He unslung the guardian spear strapped to his back as he walked, the halberd's blade coming to life with crackling forks of lightning in his grasp. The weapon had once belonged to his mentor, Argel Tal, who had taken it from the cold, dead hands of a Custodian in the wake of the Drop Site Massacre at Isstvan V; after his untimely death during the purge of Nuceria, it had been given to Bal Zadron by none other than Lord Erebus himself. He still remembered the sense of honour and pride he'd felt when the Dark Councillor had gifted him the spear, and in the thousands of years since then it had served him well.

It had been far too long since his blade last drank the blood of the Corpse-Emperor's lapdogs. It was time to rectify that…

* * *

"Drive me closer!" the commissar shouted. "I want to hit them with my sword!"

The Leman Russ tank he rode on surged forward in response, grinding the bodies of friend and foe alike to gristle beneath its treads. Jets of scalding fire erupted from the hull-mounted heavy flamer, incinerating anyone foolish enough to get in the vehicle's way, and the sponson-mounted heavy bolters cut down anyone and everyone the flamer missed. The gunners couldn't see whose colours their victims were wearing, and nor would they care; the red haze of battle had descended upon them, and all that mattered was that the blood flowed, regardless of its source.

"Keep shooting, damn you!" he brayed, a sudden fury coming over him as the rate of fire slowed. "Bring Khorne his fill! Blood for the blood god! Skulls for the skull throne!"

The entire vehicle shook as its battle cannon fired, releasing a powerful roar that stole away his hearing. Further down the street, a hab-block that the treacherous guerillas had been using for cover started to collapse, the tiny figures within tumbling and screaming as the debris buried them alive or crushed them like bugs.

The commissar grinned. He'd never liked that building anyway.

Through the haze, he could make out the forms of guardsmen—both Pit Hogs blessed by the dark gods and those who foolishly chose to resist their truth—fleeing in terror at his approach. He laughed. "Yes, scurry away like the cowards you are!" he crowed, thrusting his power sword aloft. "Let only those worthy of Lord Khorne's notice stand in my way!"

The commissar's hearing had not yet returned, and so he entirely failed to notice the keening, high-pitched roar that came from somewhere off to the side. He did, however, notice a sudden vibration run through the metal of the turret—as though something very heavy had just landed behind him.

He spun around, his confusion giving way to shock at what he saw there. A Space Marine with a winged helmet stood on the turret, a massive jump pack squatting on his back like the shell of a snail and his hands wrapped around the shaft of a massive hammer whose head crackled with lightning.

He had just enough time to raise his sword and shout his defiance before the Salamander swung that massive weapon through a powerful swing, obliterating the commissar's head.

Captain Sar'khon took hold of the headless corpse before it could finish slumping over and yanked it clear of the turret hatch, tossing the renegade carelessly over the side. The Salamander then plucked a krak grenade from his belt, pulled the pin, and dropped it into the tank's interior. This done, he fired his jump jets and vaulted away, soaring high into the air on a plume of fire; behind him, the street was flooded with blinding light for a moment as the Leman Russ exploded in a massive fireball. He ignored the blast, turning his attention back to the tactical overlays of his heads-up display.

The battle for Pol's Landing was not going well. The Third Company had had the advantage of surprise when they first made landing, but the Word Bearers and their allies were tenacious; while the Salamanders had had them on the back foot at first, the traitors had quickly dug in. Now the two sides were locked in a stalemate, unable to gain a decisive edge.

A grim expression came to the Captain's face. The loyalist guerillas were well-trained and devoted fighters, he could not deny that…but compared to the traitor guardsmen they were poorly-equipped, and they were far fewer in number besides. If this turned into a war of attrition, it would be the Salamanders and the guerillas that came up short.

He spared a glance towards the east, eyes narrowing as he took in the vast expanse of jungle at the city's edge. The Scout squads had sent no word since entering the jungle, the better to go unnoticed by the Traitor Legions. Were they drawing close to achieving their objectives?

He could only hope that was the case, because otherwise an already vicious battle would soon become even worse...

* * *

Squad Adrian stole through the compound, moving swiftly and stealthily, keeping to the shadows between hastily-constructed prefabricated buildings whose walls crawled with blasphemous runes and whose slanted roofs ended in wickedly-curved spikes. Klaxons continued to blare, filling the night air with their shrill noise, almost drowning out the pounding rain and the indistinct chatter of the mortal cultists that were hunting the Salamanders.

Sergeant Adrian paused at the mouth of an alleyway and held up a hand, motioning for the Scouts to conceal themselves. They pressed themselves up against the wall and hunkered down amidst the rubbish, drawing their camo-cloaks tight around themselves so that they would resemble nothing more than trash bags. Mere moments later a squad of half a dozen heretics ran past, shouting; not one of them spared the alleyway so much as a glance.

The sergeant cautiously poked his head around the corner once they were gone, peering up and down the street to make sure the way was clear. Once he was satisfied, he motioned for the initiates to follow and sprinted across to the other side.

Tetsuo hurried along after him, Krowe, Ignatius and Balthazar close behind. Once they'd reached the safety of the alleyway across from the one they'd just been hiding in, he gave Adrian a curious look. "Sergeant, may I ask you something?"

"Be quick," Adrian whispered, his orange eyes sweeping their surroundings for any sign of danger.

"Why did you not kill those cultists just now? They didn't know you were there; you could have done so easily."

The sergeant nodded without looking at Tetsuo. "Indeed I could have...but the killing would not have been quiet, and in this situation the last thing we need is to draw unnecessary attention to ourselves. Sounds of a scuffle would not go unnoticed, as would their bodies."

"I see…" Tetsuo had to admit that Adrian had a point. With the entire compound already on alert and hunting for them, getting into a fight now would be tantamount to marking the squad's position with a flare—decidedly unwise, given the circumstances. Admittedly he was not happy that they were just letting these particular traitors walk away unmolested, but at the very least he could understand the tactical necessity of it.

A few moments later, the sergeant gestured towards the street with his chin. "Form up, Scouts," he whispered. "Objective is in sight."

That much was true; the black stone ziggurat that squatted at the heart of the compound like a bloated spider resting in the center of its web was always visible, no matter where you were in the encampment. Tetsuo narrowed his eyes as the squad broke from cover and made their way deeper into the compound, the sight of that obsidian edifice filling him with revulsion for reasons he could not describe. It just felt _wrong_ to him on some deep, fundamental level, like the entire structure was simply something that should not be, and the closer they drew to it the worse these sensations became.

A fitting place for a Dark Apostle to make his lair, the young Salamander thought grimly.

It took the squad fifteen minutes to reach the center of the compound, where the true scale of the ziggurat became apparent—as did its true horror. Dozens upon dozens of faces covered every visible surface of the pyramid's lowest tier, some disturbingly serene and cherubic, others blatantly demonic; at first Tetsuo had thought them to be nothing more than particularly vivid and grisly frescoes, but as he watched he realized that the faces were moving—brows knitting as if in fury, mouths opening wide in silent bellows before settling into hateful scowls, eyes blinking at regular intervals just like the real thing, as if the whole structure was alive in some twisted, horrifying fashion. Emaciated corpses hung within spiked gibbets that ran along the edges of each layer, their cages swaying gently and their entrails hanging through the bars like the fronds of some hideous mockery of a tropical blossom. An ominous red light shone from the very top of the ziggurat, staining the surrounding air an unnatural shade of crimson and its source too high up for Tetsuo to see; over the drumming downpour and the constant din of the alarms, the initiate could make out faint sounds that might have been slow, monotonous chanting coming from the temple's peak.

Sergeant Adrian looked up towards the peak with a grimace. "Foul sorcery," he hissed. "The heretics must be enacting a ritual."

Tetsuo glanced at him. "Do you think our target will be there, brother-sergeant?" he asked, his voice cracking all of a sudden. The young Salamander winced as this happened.

"Highly likely." The sergeant unslung his sniper rifle and brought the weapon up, peering through its scope for a moment. He lowered it then, shaking his head. "Need a better vantage point," he muttered tersely. "Can't see anything."

"What about those rooftops, Sergeant?" Ignatius asked, pointing towards a series of flat-roofed structures a few dozen metres away. "Would that offer a better position?"

Adrian glanced in that direction, studying the buildings in question, and nodded. "Follow me, Scouts."

With those words, the squad broke from cover and stole across the square.

They had scarcely taken thirty steps, not even covering half the distance, when a bloodcurdling and inhuman roar suddenly rang out from somewhere up above.

Startled, Tetsuo looked up—and his eyes went wide at what he saw. A massive winged figure was dropping out of the sky, about to land right on top of them all!

"Scatter!" he yelled, throwing himself to the side.

The others quickly followed suit, just in time to avoid being crushed underfoot as that figure hit the ground, landing with so much force that it kicked up a shockwave which sent Tetsuo sprawling. He was on his feet quickly enough, bringing up his Stalker bolter to take aim at the dust cloud that now shrouded their assailant.

The cloud cleared a moment later, and as the figure that had attacked them came into view, Tetsuo felt his jaw drop.

Not four metres away crouched a giant, its armour crimson with a gunmetal trim. The pavement at its feet lay cracked and broken, sundered from the force of its violent impact. Spikes studded its greaves and ran along the rims of its pauldrons, their surfaces etches with fine lines of diabolic script and the icons of eight-pointed stars. Human skulls hung from its belt, clattering and knocking against one another as the figure straightened up to its full height. Massive wings like those of a bat rose from its back, made from a disturbing amalgamation of flesh and ceramite, casting shadows over its armoured frame, and instead of a helmet it wore a silver mask that seemed to adhere to its owner's face like a second skin. In one hand it clutched the shaft of a golden spear nearly as long as its owner was tall, its serrated blade aglow with the crackling blue energies of a power field. The other…

Tetsuo swallowed, feeling—for the first time in what felt like a long time—a very real hint of fear.

The figure's other arm was a blurred, amorphous mass, mutating and flowing through hundreds of different forms in a way his mind found sickening and impossible.

The Word Bearer straightened up, turning slowly as he swept his gaze across the Scouts. "Only five of you?" he said, his twin voices sounding almost disappointed. "A pity; I had hoped for more."

The Salamanders of Squad Adrian did nothing for a long moment, transfixed by the sight of this horrible fiend.

It was Krowe who shook off his stupor first. "Die, daemon!" he yelled, firing his shotgun as he charged the monster.

"No, Krowe!" Adrian hastily slung his sniper rifle and began to draw his chainsword. "Fall back!"

But it was too late.

The Chaos Space Marine stood there, taking the blast across his chestplate with no reaction whatsoever. Then he swung the arm carrying that spear, doing it so fast that his motion was nothing more than a red-and-gold blur to Tetsuo's eyes.

Krowe fell forward, his head hitting the ground before the rest of his body. Tetsuo stared at the corpse in horror.

"And then there were four." Lazily twirling his guardian spear, the possessed Marine brought up his free arm—which had finally transformed into a chitinous hand—and beckoned to the surviving Salamanders, his face distorting into the visage of a snarling bull. "Who shall be next, then?"

* * *

"Keep your distance, Scouts!" the sergeant barked, lunging at Bal Zadron with chainsword in hand and fury in his eyes. "Supporting fire!"

The surviving scouts were quick to comply, opening fire with their bolters and shotguns even as they backed away, spreading out so as to keep their sergeant—and each other—out of their field of fire. It was a clever tactic, and one that would spell death to any ordinary opponent.

Bal Zadron made no effort to dodge, letting the pellets and bolt rounds bounce ineffectually from his flesh-metal wings and the plates of his desecrated power armour. An ordinary opponent would have been cut to ribbons by such a deadly crossfire, but against him the scouts' weapons could do little more than chip his paint.

The sergeant snarled, swinging that chainsword towards the Coryphaus in a two-handed blow. Bal Zadron caught the blade on the haft of his spear, its teeth kicking up sparks as they scraped against the golden shaft. They stood locked in this position, the Salamander trying to push his blade close enough to take a bite out of Bal Zadron's hide and the Word Bearer holding him at bay.

He had to give his adversary credit; even without a suit of power armour to enhance his strength the Salamander was strong, stronger than most of the sons of Vulkan Bal Zadron had slain over the millennia.

But as great as the loyalist's strength was, Bal Zadron's was greater still.

He shoved the sergeant back with contemptuous ease, and without giving him a chance to recover his bearings the Word Bearer struck him across the face with the butt of his halberd. The force of the blow was so great that the Salamander went sprawling across the pavement, blood fountaining from his shattered nose.

He did not get up.

The Coryphaus' lips peeled back in a daemonic rictus, and he strode across the square to finish off his adversary.

He had not taken more than five steps when something leapt onto his back, shouted into his ear, and drove a knife deep into the base of his neck.

Bal Zadron let out a furious bellow, a red veil descending over his field of vision. He had actually felt that!

The gnat on his back stabbed him again and again.

"_Away_, you wretch!" the Coryphaus snarled. His free arm morphed into a long and sinuous tentacle, wrapping around the assailant's wrist before they could stab him a fourth time. Bal Zadron spun with a roar and whipped this tentacle through a vicious diagonal arc, flinging the scout away to crash into another and sending both Space Marines tumbling to the ground in a tangled heap.

Now the only Salamander still standing was the one with the shotgun, who had just enough time for his eyes to go wide before the Word Bearer covered the distance between them in the time it took to blink and cut him in half, the energized blade of Bal Zadron's guardian spear cleaving through padding, ceramite, flesh and augmented bones as if they were tissue paper.

He turned away as his victim's corpse toppled over, breath jetting from his flared nostrils in short, angry bursts. To think that one of these insolent curs had managed to wound him in such a cowardly and underhanded fashion…did these loyalist dogs have no honour, no pride?

The wound on his neck was already healing; he could feel the dark power of the daemon in his breast working in tandem with his superhuman biology to seal the injury and knit his flesh. Such an injury, to him, was completely inconsequential. But that didn't matter; the mere fact that he'd been injured was offence enough.

Bal Zadron stalked towards the Salamander who'd assaulted him, his rage turning his features crimson and causing horns to sprout painfully from his temples. That runt of a Space Marine would suffer for this indignity. Oh, how he would suffer!

The scout in question was just managing to untangle himself from his compatriot with a dazed groan by the time the Coryphaus reached him. Bal Zadron wrapped his tentacle around the Salamander's ankle and threw him again, slamming the wretch against the wall of the Black Pyramid; profane stone cracked under the impact, the tortured visages of the edifice contorting with silent shrieks of pain as foul black ichor dribbled from the broken masonry.

The Salamander started to slump, but Bal Zadron morphed his tentacle into a pincer and grabbed him by the neck, slamming him against the wall once more.

"Fool," he sneered. "A brave fool, perhaps, but a fool nonetheless. What did you hope to accomplish, son of Vulkan? Sabotage? Assassination?"

The scout did not respond, head slumped and blood running from the corner of his mouth.

Bal Zadron lifted his victim into the air and shook him once. "Answer me!" he bellowed, giving the Salamander's neck a slight squeeze.

Gritting his teeth, the scout's only response was to bring his hands up and grab weakly at the claws suspending him. As he did this, the hood of his cloak fell back, revealing his face.

The Coryphaus paused, the red haze of fury dispersing slightly to be replaced with bemusement. "What is this?"

The scout in his grasp had the same onyx skin as the rest of Vulkan's whelps, but the facial features were wrong in a subtle way, one that Bal Zadron could not immediately describe. The cheekbones weren't as prominent as those of most Salamanders he had killed, and the chin and the bridge of the nose were both narrower than normal.

The Word Bearer opened his mouth and a long black tongue slithered out, reaching out to rip the night-vision goggles from his victim's face. The Salamander glared back at him, his eyes blazing with his chapter's characteristic firelight, but they were narrow and almost almond-shaped—and the brows above them were similarly thin. He almost looked more like one of the White Scars than a proper son of Vulkan, the lack of facial hair notwithstanding.

Bal Zadron's tongue lapped up the blood running from the corner of the boy's mouth and slithered back into his own. His bovine features melted away, returning to his usual silver face mask as he frowned. "You are not of Nocturne." It was a statement, not a question.

The scout's only response was to stare down at his captor defiantly.

A twisted smile came to Bal Zadron's lips. "Have Vulkan's sons grown so few in number that they need to bolster their ranks with half-breed Astartes recruited from other planets?" he sneered.

The boy's eyes narrowed, his face contorting in a snarl.

"Oh, struck a nerve have I? When I get through with you, you will _wish_ that was all I did." The Coryphaus tightened his grasp, wringing a pained gasp from the half-breed. "Tell me where you come from, half-breed, and I will make your death reasonably painless."

"Never," the boy rasped.

"We'll see about that." Tightening his grasp yet further, Bal Zadron brought the boy closer. "What is your name?"

The scout opened his mouth, as though gasping for breath.

Bal Zadron leaned forward expectantly, a sneer of triumph on his lips.

The boy spat in his eye.

The Word Bearer howled in rage and agony, flinging the wretch aside and throwing his head back as he clawed at his face. Why had he overlooked the acid? Why had he overlooked the fact that Space Marines could spit acid?!

* * *

Tetsuo tumbled across the pavement for several feet before he managed to stop himself. The Scout pushed himself upright with a groan, massaging his neck where the Chaos Marine's pincers had dug into it. He was bleeding, but the wounds were already beginning to scab over thanks to the Larraman cells in his bloodstream.

He glanced at the Word Bearer, watching with a grim sense of satisfaction as the monster brayed and clawed at its smoking face. He honestly hadn't known that that would work, but he was certainly glad that it had.

That sense of satisfaction disappeared when the traitor legionary rounded on him, its visage—what was left of it, at any rate—contorting into a hideous parody of a human face. The eye he had spat into was just gone, and much of the surrounding flesh had burned all the way down to the bone; he could actually see part of the Word Bearer's upper jaw, and one of his nasal cavities.

"You," the traitor legionary hissed, stalking towards him, its hands transforming into serrated blades. "You _filthy, little, __**worm!**_ You cannot even _begin_ to imagine just how much I will make you _suffer_ for that…"

It advanced on him, and Tetsuo could only back away. He was completely unarmed; his Stalker bolter and combat knife had both been knocked away when the Word Bearer first threw him off, and his grapnel launcher would be of little use here. And while the spit had worked once, he doubted that the possessed Marine would fall for it again. Was this the end, then? Would he die here, like Krowe and Ignatius and Sergeant Adrian?

It can't end like this, he thought desperately. Not like this…not like this!

Then the snarling roar of a chainsword cut through the air, and the Word Bearer threw its head back with another roar of pain, wings spreading wide. It flapped once, taking to the air—and what Tetsuo saw there, standing behind the monstrosity, made his eyes go wide with disbelief. For there, bloody-faced but very much alive, stood Sergeant Adrian, his chainsword stained black with the monster's tainted blood. With him stood Balthazar, who had clearly seen better days but was still on his feet.

"Catch, Outlander!" the Scout called, tossing a boltgun Tetsuo's way. The Salamander caught the weapon by reflex and quickly scrambled to his feet, aiming upward to track the winged monstrosity's flight as he joined his surviving battle-brothers.

The sergeant pushed the gun down and shook his head, then plucked a silver canister from his belt. "Shield your eyes, Scouts," he hissed, before throwing it at the ground.

Tetsuo was quick to comply, and no sooner had he done so than he heard the unmistakable hiss of smoke from a blind grenade. Moments later he felt a hand grab him by the wrist, and then he was being pulled away, lead back into the alleyways around the center of the compound.

* * *

Bal Zadron landed mere moments later, his face twitching in rage as he stared into the cloud of smoke. He flapped his wings once again, kicking up a wind that quickly dispersed the blinding shroud of fumes—but by the time the smoke cleared, the Salamander scouts were nowhere to be seen.

Seconds later a squad of cultists came charging out of a nearby alleyway, lasguns in hand and fearful looks on their faces. "Is everything alright, my lord?" one of them asked, stepping forward. "We heard sounds of a scuffle—"

The Coryphaus beheaded him before he could finish that sentence. "The Space Marines did this to me," he snarled, baring his teeth at the cultists. "Find them, and bring them to me."

They stood there for a moment, gawking at the ruin of his face.

"Is something wrong with your ears?!" he snapped. "I said find them! Why are you all still standing here?!"

Shaken out of their stupor, the cultists hurried to obey.

Bal Zadron threw his head back and spread his arms and wings wide. "FIIIIIND THEEEEEEEEM!"

* * *

**Author's Note:** And there we have it. I'm not normally one for having my characters shout in all caps like that, but given what just happened to Bal Zadron it seemed appropriate.

Things have gone distinctly pear-shaped for our heroes, haven't they? Will the surviving members of Squad Adrian even be able to complete their mission, never mind getting out of the compound in one piece? Will the tide of battle turn in the Salamanders' favour? And what about Chaplain Gore, he wasn't even _in_ this chapter; how did he fare against those Word Bearers?

The answers to at least some of these questions will be revealed next week, in the next installment of Outlander!


	9. Profane Ceremony

**Author's Note:** And here is chapter nine, a week late; sorry about that. To make for that tardiness, this chapter is extra long.

* * *

**Profane Ceremony**

With a roar, Chaplain Gore brought his crozius down in a two-handed blow, its power field flaring brilliantly as it smote the Word Bearer's helmed head. Ceramite and flesh were vaporized, disintegrating on contact with the cudgel's deadly field, and the traitor legionary dropped to his knees and toppled lifelessly onto his side.

Gore straightened up, breathing heavily as he surveyed his immediate surroundings. That had been the last of them; the twelve Word Bearers that had emerged from the smoke to attack his position lay dead, their bodies scattered across the street in varying states of dismemberment. Of the cultists there was no sign; whether they had all spent their lives in a foolish charge or turned tail and run when the Chaos Marines began to die, the Chaplain neither knew nor cared. For the moment, at least, the fighting was done.

And what fighting it had been. Gore could not say if his battle with the squad of Word Bearers had taken hours or minutes, but however much time had passed he felt exhausted. Even with the benefits of his rosarius and his unwavering faith, that skirmish had pushed him to the very limits of his abilities; both hearts were hammering madly in his chest, the blood pounding in his ears.

He held up the rosarius, eyes narrowing at what he saw. The tiny crystal set in the heart of the amulet was flickering dimly, a clear indicator that its reserves of power were nearly spent; until it received sufficient time to recharge, he would not be able to count on the protective energy field it generated. Still, it was fortunate it had lasted as long as it did; a few more hits, and it would have collapsed altogether—and then he would have been in trouble.

The Chaplain glanced over his shoulder, eyeing the barricade and the guerillas that manned it. Most of them were still alive, though he could see that they were not without casualties; several of the defenders had fallen, caught by the mass-reactive shells of the traitors' boltguns. Three of these were clearly dead, but one yet lived—though as Gore strode up to the barricade and got a better look at the man, it was clear he would not make it.

"I can't feel my hand," the guerilla whispered, staring up at the sky.

Little wonder he should say such a thing, Gore mused grimly. The man's entire left arm was gone, and much of the shoulder was little more than a ragged, bloody stump; parts of his ribcage and lungs were clearly visible through the holes torn in his tattered uniform. He was clutching at what remained of his shoulder with his good arm in an attempt to stop the bleeding, but his effort was little more than trying to dam a river with a wet sponge.

Gore dropped to one knee at the man's side. "What is your name, son?"

The guerilla turned his head to look at the Chaplain, his face pale and his eyes unfocused. "Ma…Marcus, lord." He swallowed, as if the very act of talking caused him considerable pain. "I'm so…cold…"

"You have done your duty this day, Trooper Marcus," Gore said softly. "I commend your service and your soul to the Emperor. You have earned your rest." He gently placed his hands on either side of the man's head. "Close your eyes. When you awake, you shall be at the Emperor's side, and in His company you shall never again know pain and fear."

Weakly, Marcus's eyelids fluttered shut.

"The Emperor protects," the Chaplain whispered, and snapped the dying guerilla's neck.

Someone let out a gasp as he did this, and he looked up to see several of the defenders staring at him in wide-eyed, slack-jawed disbelief.

"No man that died in His service died in vain," he told them solemnly. "The Emperor's Peace comes to all of His servants that fall in the line of duty." He rose to his feet then, his tone hardening. "Return to your posts. Another attack could come at any time."

* * *

"Mere scouts did this to you, my Coryphaus?"

Lord Shemyaza's words were spoken softly, yet they carried clearly despite the dolorous chanting of the cultists arrayed behind him. The Dark Apostle stood before the kneeling form of Bal Zadron, his face exposed to the damp night air; he stared down at his second-in-command with eyes like twin orbs of obsidian, all glossy blackness without any distinction between pupil, iris and sclera, but no less piercing for their lack of such things.

Bal Zadron's visage contorted with anger and humiliation, the expression sending shards of pain shooting along what remained of the nerves on the left side of his face. "_A_ scout, my lord," he ground out. He kept his gaze firmly rooted on the black stone underfoot, unwilling to look his leader in the eye; whether Shemyaza offered him scorn or pity, he wanted neither.

"Just one?" The leader of the hundred-and-eighth host raised a hairless eyebrow in mild derision. "One would think you were losing your edge, Bal. The Dark Gods do not look favourably upon those who make such foolish mistakes."

The Coryphaus snarled at this rebuke, baring his teeth with a bestial growl. "The mortals track them even as we speak. The craven whelps of Vulkan will not escape this compound; before the night is done, they will be dead—and I'll feast on the hearts of that insolent mongrel." He lifted his head. "Be that as it may, now that they've been discovered and suffered casualties, the Salamanders may grow desperate to complete whatever objective they have. I believe they mean to kill you, my lord; we should consider getting you to a place of safety."

"And be seen as a coward, in the eyes of the Dark Pantheon and our followers?" Shemyaza said with disdain. "I think not." The Dark Apostle spread his arms wide in supplication, the robes of tanned human skin he wore billowing as if caught in a breeze that only he could feel. "The loyalists number only three," he went on, "and they have lost their one advantage of stealth. I have the blessings of the Chaos Gods, and the gift of prescience; they cannot harm me."

Bal Zadron narrowed his eyes. "I thought as much, lord—and yet look what these simple scouts have done to me. Underestimate them at your peril," he cautioned.

The other Word Bearer said nothing for a long moment, turning away from the Coryphaus to observe the ceremony unfolding not five feet away. Sixteen cultists stood in two concentric rings around the bloodstained altar that was the capstone of the Black Pyramid, facing inwards and spaced so that those who made up the inner ring stood between those of the outer. They swayed in place, filling the air with the slow, guttural sounds of their chanting, moving their hands through a series of esoteric gestures. Many of the words they uttered were Colchisian, their recitations passages on the true nature of reality taken from the Book of Lorgar. The air around the altar seethed and pulsed, the black slab of bloody stone almost seeming to throb like a thing alive, its hunger for death and pain staining the aether like a drop of blood in a pitcher of clear water. Bal Zadron could feel a presence taking shape within and around the altar, the coalescence of a never-born intelligence in response to all the Bearers of the Word had offered in its name; he could feel its gaze upon him, hear the whispers of its murderous thoughts on the edges of his mind.

It was here, and yet it was not. Held back by the invisible barriers that separated the material world from the Sea of Souls, the creature invoked by the cultists could not yet break through to this reality. But that would soon change; he knew that the veil was thin here, worn down by all the blasphemies and horrors that had gone into the Pyramid's construction and all the rituals and ceremonies that had been performed atop it since, and it would take only the slightest effort on their part to rip reality's fabric asunder.

Shemyaza turned to face him then, his expression serious. "Much as I think your concerns for my life are unfounded, I must admit that scouts have a talent for disruption. Find them, and at all costs keep them away from the Pyramid until the ceremony is complete; our victory depends on it."

"As you command, my lord," Bal Zadron said as he rose to his feet.

* * *

The flight of Squad Adrian had taken them into the sewers that ran beneath the Word Bearers compound. Sergeant Adrian had reasoned that the cultists would not think to look for them down here, the idea of Space Marines choosing to hide in the muck anathema to them.

As they made their way through the cramped tunnels, Tetsuo could not help thinking that the sergeant was entirely correct. The walls were caked with grime and rust, as was the narrow walkway on which the three Scouts trod. To the left, the channel that water should have flowed through was choked with grime, blood and offal, the detritus filling the dank air with the exceedingly foul stench of rotting meat; clouds of flies gyred and danced above the water's filthy surface, the droning of their wings forming a backdrop to the footfalls of the Salamanders and the steady dripping of blood from sewer grates.

Tetsuo grimaced, suppressing a shudder of revulsion as his gaze fell upon a bloated corpse floating face down in the muck. This place was disgusting, and the sooner they were out of it the better.

Ahead of him, Balthazar shook his head. "I can't believe they're gone," he said quietly.

A sombre look came over the other initiate's face. He, Balthazar, Ignatius and Krowe had been together for the better part of a decade, and while they hadn't been the closest of friends—thanks in no small part to Tetsuo's unique status—they could still count on and trust one another. They'd shared such high hopes for themselves and each other, dreams of glory and heroic deeds.

Now Ignatius and Krowe were gone, killed in the time it took to blink.

"Sergeant, what are we going to do about our battle-brothers?" he asked. "We can't just leave them here for the traitors to play with…"

Adrian did not slow down or even look over his shoulder as he replied. "We shall retrieve their bodies when and if we can, Scout Tetsuo. Ignatius and Krowe will not be left behind. But until then, we must focus on the task of staying alive…and completing our objective."

Balthazar came to a halt, almost causing Tetsuo to bump into him. "With respect, Sergeant, is that even possible at this point? The enemy is aware of our presence, and we've already suffered casualties."

"Balthazar has a point, Sergeant," Tetsuo was forced to concede, albeit reluctantly. "The odds don't favour us. Should we not abort and fall back?"

The sergeant stopped and turned slowly to face them, letting Tetsuo get his first good look at Adrian's visage since they'd fled from the ziggurat. Already a square-jawed and harsh-faced man even by the standards of Space Marines, his expression was made even harsher by that blow from the butt of the Word Bearer's spear; his broad nose was broken, the skin above his upper lip stained with dried blood from his nostrils, and the right side of his face was so heavily bruised that his eye had swollen shut and could not be opened.

But while his right eye might have been useless, the sergeant's left eye was working perfectly—and Tetsuo could not help but flinch at the cold anger he saw in its orange depths.

"Your battle-brothers gave their lives to further our mission, Scouts," he said sharply. "To abort now would be to spit on their sacrifice and dishonour their memory. It is to dishonour the teachings and virtues that our Primarch laid out millennia ago, all that the Salamanders hold dear. Self-reliance. Self-sacrifice. _Loyalty_. These are the tenets we must uphold; without them, we are no better than the Traitor Legion _filth _that walks the streets above us!"

The young Salamander flinched, wincing at this rebuke. In all the years that he'd been under Adrian's tutelage, Tetsuo had never once seen him this angry. But it was not merely this that made him recoil so; the sergeant's words stung, for they carried the bitter sting of truth.

Tetsuo bowed his head in shame. "Forgive my lapse, Sergeant."

"And mine as well," Balthazar added, sounding similarly chastened.

Adrian said nothing for a long moment. When he finally spoke, his tone had softened somewhat.

"I understand that this is difficult for you, initiates; to lose two of your brothers on your first deployment is not something easily dealt with. And I know that this crucial mission, with the odds so heavily arrayed against us, is a daunting one." He slowly shook his head. "Had it been up to me, you would not have been assigned to this; your high marksmanship scores aside, you were not ready for this. Be that as it may, we have our orders, and we are within spitting distance of our objective; we cannot turn back now. Brother-Captain Sar'khon tasked us with eliminating the enemy's leader, and that is precisely what we shall do. And if we should die in the attempt, it shall be as heroes, not cowards who fled from danger."

"But how will we do it?" Tetsuo asked tentatively. "The entire compound stands between us and the Dark Apostle…and if you'll forgive my saying so, Sergeant, you don't look like you're in any condition to be using that sniper rifle."

The Sergeant nodded. "True enough. The original plan is no longer feasible—which means we shall simply have to improvise." Beckoning them closer, he dropped to one knee and began to run a gloved finger through the grime on the floor; as Tetsuo leaned forward, he could see that Adrian was sketching out a rough map of the compound in the refuse.

"Now then," Adrian said, "This is what we shall do…"

* * *

The search teams had been scouring the compound for the better part of an hour when the constant blaring of the alarms was suddenly drowned out by the roar of an explosion. Bal Zadron's head snapped up from the manhole he'd been investigating, whipping towards the sound; his gaze quickly fell on a massive pillar of smoke and fire rising from the compound's eastern quadrant. His remaining eye narrowed, and he bared his fangs. That part of the compound was where the armouries and motor pools were located; the Salamanders must have planted a bomb.

No sooner had this thought occurred to him than the vox-bead melded with the bones of his inner ear crackled to life. "My lord, the Loyalists have blown up the main weapons cache! They're fleeing the scene; we're tracking them now."

Leathery wings of flesh-metal erupted from the Coryphaus' back as he began to stride purposefully towards the blaze. "Do not let them out of your sight," he growled, unslinging his guardian spear. "I am on my way."

And with those words, the Word Bearer flapped his wings and took to the air, the daemon bound within his breast slavering in anticipation of the coming slaughter. As he flew, Bal Zadron opened a general channel. "All search parties, converge on the eastern quadrant of the compound and lock it down; do not let the Salamanders escape!"

* * *

Tetsuo watched as a squad of cultists tore past the mouth of the alleyway he was sheltering in, peering at them from beneath the hood of his cameleoline cloak. Huddled tightly in the corner next to a pile of rubbish, his cloak drawn tightly about himself, he would have looked like nothing more than a garbage bag to an observer.

Once they were past, and once his Lyman's Ear had made sure that no one else was approaching his location, the young Salamander rose to his feet and stole out of his hiding place, making his way towards a spindly tower bedecked with serrated spikes and bleached, polished bones. The mere sight of this tower filled him with a deep sense of revulsion, much like the ziggurat had but to a far lesser degree. What purpose the heretics had built it for, he neither knew nor cared to guess; all that mattered was that it was tall enough to offer him a decent vantage point of the ziggurat's apex.

He pressed himself flat against the base of the tower as he reached it, listening intently for any sign that he'd been spotted, scanning the skies for any sign of an airborne silhouette. He spotted it after a few moments, the winged shape of that Word Bearer champion thrown into stark relief by the light of the distant flames, shrinking steadily as it drew closer to the explosion.

The sight of the winged warrior filled him with worry, and his thoughts turned to Balthazar and Sergeant Adrian. The two of them were taking a considerable risk, drawing the attention of the traitors upon themselves this way; and with the Traitor Lord bearing down on their position, his fellow Scouts were in even greater danger. Part of him wanted to abandon his objective and go to help them, but he quickly quashed that thought—against a foe as formidable as that possessed traitor legionary, one extra Scout wouldn't make a difference. Worse, it would undo their last, best shot at completing their mission.

I have to trust in them, he told himself. They know the risks, and they carry out their part of the plan so that I can carry out mine.

With that thought in mind, Tetsuo grasped the rungs of a ladder running up the tower's side and began to climb, the Sergeant's sniper rifle clattering softly with every step he took.

It took him nearly half a minute to reach the top, whereupon he hauled himself onto a narrow, square-shaped platform that would have been considered small and cramped even for an ordinary human; for him, there was barely any elbow room. Turning himself towards the distant shape of the ziggurat, he dropped to one knee, unslung the rifle and rested its barrel atop a guardrail made from human femurs. After taking a moment to make sure that the magazine was slotted in correctly and the sights were properly aligned, he nestled the stock in the pit of his arm and peered through the scope, taking aim at the distant figures atop the temple's roof.

* * *

The altar throbbed with anticipation, the crimson light of its hunger staining the air around it like blood billowing in clear water. The celebrants swayed and capered, chanting in tune to the steady beat of the altar's pulse. Ghostly whispers drifted through the air, barely audible over the sounds of the cultists and the pounding drumbeat of that unseen heart.

Shemyaza felt a prickling on his skin, and found his lips spreading wide in a smile. The eyes of the never-born intellect were upon him, and he threw his head back and spread his arms wide to bask in its attention. In his left hand the Dark Apostle clutched his accursed crozius, the eight-pointed star of Chaos Undivided that was the maul's head aglow with iridescent warp-fire, the violet flames blazing within the empty sockets of the skull worked into its center. In his right was a more modest and humble weapon, a simple flint dagger of the sort crafted by humanity's primitive ancestors in a bygone age; but this stone tool, in its own way, was just as grand and majestic as the crozius, and it had a much greater role to play in the ritual about to unfold.

"It is time," he proclaimed, his soft, sibilant words carrying easily over the din. "Bring forth the prisoners."

No sooner had he uttered this command than the celebrants parted, and a train of battered and dishevelled captives were lead up the last flight of steps to stand atop the apex of the Black Pyramid. Bound hand and foot to one another with ropes and cuffs, the prisoners were all but helpless.

"Look upon these wretches, my children!" Shemyaza declared, sweeping his crozius towards them. "Once they were your friends and family, but when they turned from the Dark Gods and chose to keep their misguided faith in the pathetic Corpse-Emperor you once served, they severed those bonds of brotherhood. For years, these vipers have dwelt in our midst, peddling their poison to the gullible and the misguided. They deceived you, conspired against you, and they have called down the Adeptus Astartes in a desperate effort to destroy you all—to destroy the _truth_ you have embraced!"

Murmurs of anger and assent tore through the cultists. The prisoners shrank back in obvious fear, and Shemyaza drank in their dismay. He allowed the discontent to build for several moments, then held up a hand for silence.

"But even though they turned their backs on the Word," he continued once his acolytes had quieted, "they are not entirely lost to us. There is still a way that they can serve, my children; there is still a way for these wayward sons and daughters to be redeemed in the eyes of the Pantheon!" The Dark Apostle swept his jet-black gaze across the assembled worshippers, looking to each man and woman expectantly. "And do you know what that is? Do you know how these deceivers shall be made to earn their redemption?"

The worshippers shook their heads.

Shemyaza smiled. The expression did not reach his eyes and was entirely without warmth. "Then I shall tell you."

His congregation looking on expectantly, the Dark Apostle spread his arms wide in a grand gesture, his robes billowing so that the faces sewn into them seemed to ripple and undulate through a series of tormented expressions. "We stand upon consecrated ground, my brethren; the veil between our crude material world and the ineffable majesties of the gods' domain has been made thin and permeable here, thin and permeable by our acts of devotion to the Dark Powers. This Black Pyramid is a temple, a fane and altar to the dread Gods of Chaos—a monument built of pain, of suffering, and of blood.

"And as we built this temple," he went on, his voice rising, "as we used this altar to honour the true masters of this universe, our actions did not go unnoticed. Years of sacrifice and toil have drawn the gaze of a power in the Warp, my children, a benediction of the Gods made living and real! It is this power, this guardian, this emissary of the Pantheon, that shall cleanse our world of the False Emperor's lapdogs and bring us into _true_ communion with our masters!"

A great cheer went up amongst the cultists.

"But there is more," Shemyaza continued. "The veil is permeable, yes, but it is not yet weak enough for our benefactor to come through and begin its holy work. One final act of devotion is needed to give our guardian the strength it needs to break through into this reality." His gaze fell upon the captives then, his smile widening into a malevolent sneer. "One final act of devotion is left for our wayward brethren to undertake. Bring forth the youngest among them!"

With a cry of approval, the celebrants fell upon the gang of prisoners, breaking away a few seconds later with one in tow—a little girl with unkempt, dirty red hair, whose eyes were wide with terror. The child struggled furiously in her captor's grasp, reaching out for several of the other prisoners, begging them to help her; but between their restraints and the wall of captives blocking them off, they could do nothing. Shemyaza felt the hungry approval of that never-born intelligence and licked his lips, relishing in the child's fear and desperation.

The two cultists dragged her forcibly to the altar and lifted her onto it, paying little heed to her kicks and screams.

"Hold her down," the Dark Apostle commanded, hooking his accursed crozius to his belt as he strode up to the altar. He loomed over the girl, staring down at her with a grin, pleased by the fear writ clear across her scuffed and dirtied face. With one hand he reached out and gently brushed two fingers against her cheek, letting out a low, malevolent chuckle when she flinched and pulled away from the contact.

Turning his gaze back to his flock, Shemyaza held his arms out to his sides and slowly brought them up until his hands met overhead, his armoured fingers clasping around the hilt of his flint dagger.

"In blood our benefactor was conceived," he pronounced, turning the dagger until it pointed straight down with a slow solemnity. "And in blood, it shall be born into this world."

The girl stared up at the dagger's point, her pupils shrunk to terrified pinpricks.

"Blood, for the blood god…!"

* * *

Bal Zadron soared over one of the compound's winding streets like a vast, predatory bird, every flap of his flesh-metal wings sundering the air with a roar of thunder. Below, the Salamanders ran like mice in a field, game so busy trying to evade the hound's noose drawing tighter and tighter around them that they missed the shadow of the hawk passing overhead to blot out the sun.

It would be a trivial effort to swoop down now and end their miserable lives, he knew. But that would be far too quick. He wanted them to suffer for this indignity, the mongrel half-breed especially. They would be broken and humiliated, and they would be taught that even the fearless Space Marines could be made to know terror; only then, once their minds had shattered and they'd given in to despair, would he allow them the release of death.

Grinning savagely at the thought, the Coryphaus tucked his wings and entered a shallow dive to bring him closer to the street.

The grin faded from his lips as he got his first good look at the Salamanders.

There were only two of them. Where was the third one?

Bal Zadron's remaining eye widened in sudden, horrified realization. A diversion!

Even as this thought occurred to him, a shot—unmistakably from an Astartes-pattern sniper rifle—rang out.

* * *

Something struck Shemyaza dead in the center of his forehead with great force, snapping his head back and wringing a grunt of surprise and pain from his lips. A gasp went up among the cultists, the adulation and ecstasy on their faces morphing into stunned disbelief.

Something warm and wet started to trickle down his face from the point of impact. He felt he should know what it was, but for some reason the name of it escaped him; there was a dull ache in the centre of his skull, and a strange fog seemed to have settled over his mind, a fog that grew thicker and thicker with every passing second and making it increasingly hard to think.

His grip on the dagger's hilt loosened, the blade slipping from his fingers to clatter on the altar's stone surface next to the child. He tried to reach out and pick it up, but his arms would not obey him and hung limply at his sides.

Shemyaza blinked, his features contorting with confusion. What was this, he found himself wondering, far more idly than he should have. What was happening to him?

The answer came to him a moment later, as the world began to go dark and all sensation began to fade away. This was death.

Without a word, Shemyaza toppled backwards like a marionette whose strings had been neatly cut.

* * *

With his daemonically-enhanced sight, Bal Zadron watched the robed form of the Dark Apostle collapse, a hole big enough for a mortal child's fist to fit through in his head and surprised look frozen on his face.

For a moment, all he felt was shock—shock that the Salamanders had come up with so simple a ruse, shock that he had fallen for it, shock that it had worked so very, horribly well. He hovered in midair, scarcely able to believe what he was seeing, knowing deep in the very core of his being, that this was the end. Pitiful though Shemyaza's prescience may have been, he was the heart and mind of the hundred-and-eighth host; without his leadership, without his charisma and zeal, the cultists' morale would plummet.

They had lost.

Another shot rang out then, and cries of dismay and terror went up from the celebrants as one of their number collapsed, his head reduced to a fine pink mist. This sight snapped Bal Zadron out of his trance, his disbelief quickly morphing into cold anger as he followed the shot's trajectory back to its source.

It had come from one of the towers of bone, and there, huddled atop it with a sniper rifle braced along one of the guardrails…

The Word Bearer's face contorted in fury, a red haze descending over his field of vision.

It was the half-breed.

* * *

On the street below, Sergeant Adrian looked up grimly as the Word Bearer champion veered off in another direction. He'd heard the shots, and knew what they signified; doubtless the traitor legionary did as well. And that meant that Tetsuo was about to be in serious trouble.

Pressing his fingers to the headset in his ear, he broke radio silence. "Squad Adrian to Captain Sar'khon," he said in hushed, clipped tones. "Mission accomplished; target eliminated. Request immediate extraction from these coordinates, ASAP…"

Tetsuo racked the bolt and fired again, taking off the head of one of the cultists who had been holding down that child. His face was a mask of cold anger as he shifted his aim to the other cultist and pulled the trigger, her skull bursting like an overripe melon. What little satisfaction he felt at having slain the Dark Apostle was buried under a smothering blanket of righteous fury, and he continued to fire, picking off the disoriented heretics one by one even as they ran about in a panic.

"Heretic scum," he hissed under his breath. It was bad enough that they had violated their oaths to serve the Emperor, turned from His light and embraced the Ruinous Powers, but now they were perfectly willing to murder innocent _children_. Any shred of pity he might have felt for the wayward inhabitants of Skabb was now dead; he would not let a single one of them leave that ziggurat alive.

Some of the prisoners were starting to take advantage of the panic, breaking ranks and looping their chains around their captors' throats to strangle them to death. He looked on in quiet satisfaction as one of them ripped a key from their victim's pocket and swiftly used it to unlock their own cuffs, before turning to free the rest. Two of them rushed over to the girl and helped her off the altar, cradling her close to them; others quickly began to loot weapons from the bodies of the heretics he'd killed.

The sight brought a ghost of a smile to his lips. Hopefully they would be able to escape.

The remaining cultists were fleeing down the ziggurat's stairs in a blind panic. His smile fading, Tetsuo lined up a shot on the one in the lead.

A furious, inhuman roar split the air before he could pull the trigger—a roar that was growing louder and closer with each passing second.

Eyes widening, Tetsuo looked towards its source.

The winged shape of that Traitor Lord was shooting towards him like a bat straight out of hell.

A sinking feeling formed in the pit of Tetsuo's gut. There was no time to climb down, and no time to reorient himself to properly face the approaching monster.

He had just enough time to grimace and brace himself before the Chaos Marine was upon him.

* * *

Bal Zadron slammed into the tower at full speed, polished bones splintering like dry twigs from the force of the impact. His sudden and violent arrival made the spire bend and sway ominously, subjecting it to forces and stresses it was never meant to endure; the sound of hundreds if not thousands of neatly-organized bones snapping in sequence filled the air, meshing together into a destructive cacophony as the tower began to topple and collapse.

The debris fell upon him, knocking the Coryphaus and his prisoner from the air. They plummeted to the ground amidst a rain of powdered femurs and twisted rebar, grappling furiously as each tried to force the other to the bottom. The half-breed hocked as if he were about to spit once again, but Bal Zadron quickly grabbed his head with both hands and forced his mouth shut; in retaliation the Salamander threw a punch into the damaged half of his face, wringing a snarl of pain and fury from the Word Bearer's lips.

When they hit the ground it was Bal Zadron who landed and took the brunt of the fall, landing hard on his back; the impact drove the breath from his lungs, and for a moment he could only lie there stunned amidst the rubble.

That should have been the end of him, but no killing stroke came, no coup-de-grace to end his life. He sat up when he regained his senses and looked around, quickly locating his foe a short distance away; the half-breed was slowly rising to his feet, dazed and groaning as he clutched at his head.

Bal Zadron grinned savagely. The scout must have taken the fall harder than he had. Perfect…

He picked himself out of the rubble and stood up, striding towards the Salamander; the half-breed had his back turned to him, and didn't seem to notice his approach until the Word Bearer was almost upon him. By then it was too late for him to get away; Bal Zadron grabbed him by the shoulders and turned, slamming him face first into the wall of an adjacent building with so much force that the entire prefabricated structure shuddered noisily. He slammed him into the wall again and again, every blow causing the metal sheet to buckle and warp; and with the fourth blow, the entire thing collapsed like a cheap house of cards.

He let the half-breed go, grinning maliciously as the loyalist swayed and tottered like a drunk. The wretch lost his balance and began to fall, but Bal Zadron caught him by the upper arm, pulled him to his feet and delivered a vicious backhand blow across the face. Blood sprayed from the Salamander's mouth, and Bal Zadron thought he saw a couple of teeth go flying.

He threw him down on the ground and brought his foot down on the half-breed's chest, relishing the way his victim desperately began to gasp and wheeze for air.

"Tell me your name, half-breed," he said.

The Scout didn't answer, glaring weakly but defiantly up at him.

Bal Zadron's face took on the aspect of a furious bull. He pressed his armoured sole down further, threatening to crush the brat's ribs. "Tell. Me. Your. Name."

Grimacing in pain and anger, the half-breed gasped out an answer. "Osamu…Tetsuo…" Somehow, he found the strength to shoot the Word Bearer yet another defiant look; when he next spoke, there was a hint of strength to his words. "Osamu Tetsuo did this to you, traitor. Osamu Tetsuo ruined your eye." An arrogant, cocky smirk came to his lips. "Osamu Tetsuo, the half-breed."

The Coryphaus sneered down at him. "You have courage, Osamu Tetsuo." He gave the boy a vicious stomp, relishing the cry of pain he let out. "But that is all you have." He dropped down to one knee, glaring into the boy's eyes, his left arm morphing into a tentacle that he quickly used to hold the scout's mouth shut.

"Listen well, Osamu the bastard child of Vulkan," he growled. "I will not kill you now, but that is not because I'm feeling merciful. You made me suffer this day, boy, and now I will make you suffer as well. I will find whatever miserable little planet spawned you, mongrel—and when that day comes, I will make its people wish you'd never been born." He leaned forward, his breath gusting over Tetsuo's face in waves so heated that blisters sprang up in seconds. "I will find you, then, and I will break every last bone in your body; then I will drag you back to my flagship and make you watch as I put your home planet to fire and the sword."

He fell silent, tilting his head as a sound reached his ears. It was a sound he recognized all too well, a distant, rising howl coming from the direction of Pol's Landing. He glanced in that direction, squinting into the murk of the night, and with his enhanced sight he could just make out a tiny dot on the horizon, a dot that was growing larger and clearer with every passing second.

A Thunderhawk gunship. So the Salamanders were on their way…

Bal Zadron turned his attention back to the boy. "We shall meet again, Osamu Tetsuo, and I shall have my revenge."

With those words the Word Bearer released the boy and stood to his full height, facing the Black Pyramid. Unfurling his wings, he took to the air with a single flap, streaking towards the apex of the ziggurat with all haste.

It was time he took his leave of this miserable planet.

* * *

Balthazar and Sergeant Adrian reached the site of the collapsed tower soon after and quickly began to dig through the rubble. They found Tetsuo lying there amidst the debris, his face a mass of bruised tissue and his teeth stained red with the blood of his split lips. He was staring straight up at the sky, not moving.

Balthazar dropped to his knee at the other Scout's side. "Tetsuo? Tetsuo, can you hear me?" he asked urgently.

Slowly, Tetsuo turned his head to look up at his battle-brother. A grin tugged at his swollen lips. "So you _can_ use my name…"

The other Scout scowled. "Don't get used to it, Outlander."

The battered young Space Marine rolled his eyes. "Whatever you say." He spat out a mouthful of blood with a grimace. "Now, help me up…"

Balthazar was quick to comply, draping one of Tetsuo's arms across his shoulders and hauling him to his feet. As he did this the cry of the Thunderhawk's engines grew into a throaty roar, and the two Scouts looked skyward to see the emerald gunship coming in hot. It swooped low overhead, its engines screaming and its weapons flashing as it strafed the surrounding prefabricated structures with suppressive fire from its heavy bolters; the mass-reactive shells chewed through the hastily-erected metal walls like cheap foil, and entire buildings collapsed as their flimsy supports gave out, blanketing the immediate area with a light haze of dust.

The Thunderhawk circled around and came in for a landing, its front ramp swinging down as its landing gear extended. Epistolary Tigris strode down the ramp, force staff in hand and flames crackling at his fingertips; even with his face concealed beneath his blue Mark VII helmet, Tetsuo could practically feel the Librarian's distaste as he swept his gaze across the Word Bearers' compound. A full squad of Devastators disembarked in his wake, carrying flamers, heavy bolters and plasma cannons; at an unspoken command the ten Space Marines quickly spread out to secure the perimeter of their impromptu landing zone.

Sergeant Adrian walked up to Tigris, nodding curtly. "Mission accomplished," he said. "The Dark Apostle is dead."

"You are certain?" The Librarian asked.

"Very certain," Tetsuo said. "I blew his brains out myself."

Tigris turned his gaze on Tetsuo then, saying nothing for a long moment. Then he nodded. "Well done. You can leave the rest to us, Scouts; it's clear just from looking at you three that you're in no state to continue fighting."

He turned away, but before he could leave Tetsuo lifted a hand. "Wait!"

The Epistolary stopped and turned around fully, the crystal lattices of his psychic hood making it impossible simply to glance over his shoulder. "Yes?"

"There were prisoners, Epistolary. Atop the ziggurat; the Dark Apostle was going to sacrifice them, I think." He spat out another wad of bloody phlegm and continued urgently. "I don't know where they are now, but I'm sure they were trying to escape. Please, tell the Devastators to check their fire."

"I see. We will keep our eyes open, then."

Relief washed over Tetsuo. "Thank you, sir."

With that he allowed himself to be led into the gunship's waiting hold and secured into his restraint harness. As the metal harness folded over him and clamped him into place against the wall, the young Salamander let the tension bleed from his body as the day's events finally caught up with him.

His head slumped forward, his eyes drifted shut, and by the time Balthazar and Sergeant Adrian had secured themselves, Osamu Tetsuo passed out.

The Battle for Skabb continued, but his part in it was over.

* * *

Outside the Thunderhawk, Tigris assembled the Devastators of Squad Zarxes.

"Our Primarch and our Emperor smile on us this day, Salamanders!" he proclaimed. "The Word Bearers' leader has been slain; our brave initiates have uprooted the foul heart of this vile heresy!" The head of his staff flared with the eldritch energies of the Warp, bathing the landing zone in their harsh light. "Now it falls to us to salt the earth, and ensure that the taint of Chaos never again takes root. We will leave not a single stone standing in this accursed place, and not a single heretic will live to see the light of day!"

The Space Marines bellowed their agreement.

He held up a hand for silence; once they had fallen quiet, he continued. "But be cautious, my battle-brothers. The foe has taken loyalist members of the populace captive, loyalists they intended to sacrifice to their dark gods. Keep your eyes peeled and your wits about you; these men and women have suffered enough."

"We will save as many of them as we can!" Sergeant Zarxes swore.

Beneath his helm, Tigris smiled. "The Primarch could ask for no less, Sergeant." He thrust his staff skyward. "Into the fires of battle!" he shouted.

The Devastators answered as one. "Unto the anvil of war!"

* * *

The roar of heavy weapons had just begun to fill the night air by the time Bal Zadron landed atop the Black Pyramid's roof. He set down amidst a scene of carnage; bodies lay scattered everywhere, most of them cultists and quite a few of them missing their heads, and the scent of blood hung heavy in his nostrils, stirring the daemon in his breast.

A hand grabbed his armoured foot, and he looked down. One of the cultists lay at his feet, remarkably still alive; the half-breed's shot had only grazed her head, shearing away the hair and skin on her temple and giving him an unobstructed look at her skull. It had cracked, and fluid was leaking from it.

Her mouth worked soundlessly for a moment, like a fish on a hook. When she finally managed to speak, her words were croaked and halting. "Help… me…"

Lips curling in contempt, the Coryphaus casually brought his sole down on her head. A soft crunch of breaking bone reached his ears, and the cultist's body went limp.

Without so much as a backwards glance at the woman he'd just killed Bal Zadron made his way to the altar, casting about for the flint dagger that he knew Shemyaza had intended to use during the ceremony. He quickly caught sight of it, lying atop the slab, and picked it up; as he wrapped his fingers around the blade's hilt, he could feel the eyes of the never-born intelligence upon him. Its emotions washed over him in a tide—anger, fear, desperation, a yearning to be free and at last be born into this world. It was in his power to free it, the daemon's voice whispered in his ear; all he needed to do was spill a trifling amount of blood.

"I think not," the Word Bearer said to the open air. "I have better things to do than set you free."

With those words he drew back his arm and swung the dagger through a great overhand slash. The veil ripped open at the athame's passage, the curtain of the material world peeling back to expose the riotous, kaleidoscopic maelstrom of the Sea of Souls. Sights, sounds and smells that the mortal mind could never conceive and was never meant to experience bombarded him, the impossible shapes and invisible colours that writhed and churned within the Empyrean's depths enough to drive a man stark raving mad at just a glance.

Bal Zadron stared into the insanity with a look of near-boredom as he pocketed the knife. "We should have done this seven years ago," he snarled to himself.

He stepped through the Warp rift, ignoring the daemon's howls of frustration and rage, and vanished from Skabb. Moments later this wound in reality collapsed, the boundaries between the Materium and the Immaterium reasserting themselves once more.

* * *

**Author's Note:** And so Bal Zadron has gotten away. Will he return to make good on his threats? Only time will tell. Speaking of time, I'm putting this story on a short hiatus so that I can wrap up chapter ten.

Join us next time as the Battle of Skabb draws to a close, and an important decision is reached about the future of some members of Third Company.


End file.
